The monkey made me do it

Only a mother could love that face

We dove the Edmonds Underwater Park last Saturday and, if I sit still enough, I can still feel the waves pushing me along in their hypnotizing seductive rhythm.

The dive was almost called off due to waves so high they were creating whitecaps, but I spotted a guy who I took classes from over the winter and he told us that about 10 feet below the waves was some of the best visibility he'd seen in a while, and that info plus the shining of the sun (oh, how I've missed it!) made us decide to risk the surf after all.

The Edmonds site is known for a few things:
* A VERY long surface swim, particularly at high tide (it was high tide, of course)
* A shallow site with an average depth of 30ish feet, with a sandy bottom
* Haaah, I said sandy bottom
* Various constructed things done by hippies that have been growing over with sea life for the past 20 or so years
* Giant fish, since it's a Marine Sanctuary
* Giant fish that also attack you, since they know you can't hurt them and they are eeeevil.

We ate a lot of water on the swim out to the buoys that marked the underwater features. Actually, we only made it halfway before I begged to swim the rest underwater (being smaller than my dive buddy, I was being tossed around like... uh... like a very wet pinball? Dorothy's house in the tornado? a salad? I've lost my simile mojo). We had to hold hands as we descended (platonically) to keep track of each other, the visibility was that bad - I couldn't even see my own fins, much less my buddy's. But once we broke around 10' in depth, the haze disappeared and we slammed into the sea floor. Hey, I told you it was shallow. We swam out with the waves pushing us back and forth, watching the reeds on the sea floor do their dance for us, until we got to the cable "streets" that were meant to guide us from feature to feature. I swear this place is like some sort of hippie underwater Disneyland.

Then I met the park mascot, the Cabezon. Not quite as cute as Goofy, but apparently he still wanted to interact with me in his own little way. Which was head-butting. I was swimming along, looking at all of the giant crabs and sea stars that populated the cables, when all of a sudden a little alarm in my head went "(clearing throat)... uh, you might want to look up now". I looked up and saw this adorable face swimming right towards my head.



There was luckily enough time for me to kick up and over the guy, who apparently was not used to evasive manuevers and kept plowing along in his straight path, certain that someday he's ram something that wasn't supposed to be there. We'd hit the Cabezon nesting season, and they are widely known for being very protective of their nests. After that first encounter (which I tried to communicate to my buddy, who hadn't seen any of it) (there are no good "hey, that fish just tried to head-butt me" hand signals), I was on guard but we didn't see any more for a while. Lots of 5' and 6' Ling Cods, but they weren't interested in doing much more than lounging around and giving off the hey-I'm-huge vibe. We saw a teepee made of giant metal pipes, the creation of a guy named Alex who'd spelled out his name in concrete parking lot end-stop thingies (WHAT ARE THOSE CALLED? Seriously, it's bugging me), some rock sculptures, some boat wrecks, lots of anemones, and a giant tube that looked enticing until I saw the ring of cabezons guarding the entrance.

One of them attacked my buddy, which was disturbing yet hilarious to watch. It poked him in the leg (Cabezons don't bite, their only defensive maneuver is to use their basketball-sized heads as weapons) and when J turned to see what the hell was going on the fish swam up and whapped him in the arm. Then as J slow-mo turned the other direction (it's hard to be fast with so much crap on you) the fish whapped him in the other arm. Then it did a couple of victory laps and settled back on the tube, where it almost completely blended in with the environment. I was laughing and trying to reenact the scene with hand motions, and ended up accidentally giving him the "mortal danger" hand signal (I found this out later) so we turned around and headed back in. Once the signal mix-up had been worked out we made a second dive (yes, crazy) and were far more successful at dodging the fish and enjoying the beautiful scenery.

It was fun.

posted by LadyJay @ 10:17 AM