motor works

Finally!

Motor works. It’s a little rough but i’m going to change the oil today and hopefully that will help but YAY! Because we could go fishing! And diving! And so we did.

I took Brad and Jeff to Coronado to fish in the afternoon on Monday and then we went diving early on Tuesday. Brad was going to bed and asked “so what time we getting up? 7? 8?” and i said, “ummmm, no. 5.”

“are you kidding?”

“no, we need to go early to get the flat water and then be able to be back before the wind starts and before the filet guys start around noon.”

“damn. Ok. Whatever you say.”

And so we went. We launched at juncalito but the ramp was a bit steeper this year and i didn’t want to pull the van all way down so we kinda had to force the boat off. then we took off for danzante north.

panamic graysby

mutton hamlet


i can’t kill anything so when i do my transects i tell them all RUN AWAY!! RUN AWAY!! BRAD’S COMING!! But he still manages to kill some.

Pretty:


we ended up pulling out the boat at Escondido because juncalito was a bit sketchy and then decided to go ahead and launch there again today. worked great. Got all the way to another site at the north end of danzante when i pictured in my head, my camera sitting on the bed. Dammit! So i knew for sure i was going to see something cool. And sure enough i did, two Mycteroperca prionura, beautiful beautiful congeners of my fish and extremely rare. I’ve dove in the gulf for about 6 years and i’ve never seen one dying, only in fishermen’s catches. And i always thought, maybe i didn’t recognize them, they look similar, etc. but now having seen them, it was like pow! Different in profile and swimming behavior and just amazing light lavender background with brown spots and they just came so close to me and the viz was awesome and i wanted to stay with them but i knew i had to move to do the fish counts. And i was stoked because i thought damn, i DID do a good job drawing them, never having seen them in the water!


so now, we’re getting to the full moon and we’ll go out to camp on Carmen in order to dive the aggregation each day in the afternoon. First i have to pick up a letter of permission from the park and then find out from rafa when he takes clients out, then figure out when he can take us out there. now as i’m typing this i’m looking around this tiny room and all the stuff we have packed in it and i’m thinking of all the stuff we’re probably going to try to take to the island. It’s a LOOOOOT of stuff. Yikes.

So i guess i better do that!

Hopefully i’ll have some exciting stories to tell in a week.