I came back to the McLoughlin Point outfall on Sept. 30, 2023. I did a dive here the week before (taking video) and noticed that the amount of fish had dramatically increased since a year ago. I wanted to update this website with some new photos so that's why I came back again today.
In order to save air, I swam out on the surface to a patch of bull kelp just off the point. This marked the start of the boulder pile that covers the outfall pipe. Visibility was only 8-10' near shore.
As I descended and started swimming along the boulder pile, the visibility improved to 15-20', but there were lots of stringy plankton bits floating around.
I came across an octopus den that I had seen last week. This time, the octopus was home and it lunged out of the den and pulled itself onto my camera. It only stayed there for a few seconds before returning to its den in a cloud of silt.
I continued to swim out along the boulder pile. I noticed that since the outfall pipe has only been down for 3 or 4 years and most of the rockfish are older than that so they must have moved in from elsewhere. Today I saw copper, brown, canary (most of them were young and small), Puget Sound and large groups of black rockfish. I also saw several kelp greenlings and lingcod. The boulders are still mostly covered with red seaweed and are very silty. Small plumose anemones are beginning to colonize the boulders.
I reached the end of the boulder pile and the beginning of the exposed pipe. The current wasn't as strong as last weekend and it seemed to be mostly flowing back towards shore, so I risked swimming out as far as the crab bridge. My maximum depth out here was 65' at low tide. I noticed that small plumose anemones were starting to grow on the pipe as well.
I returned to the boulder pile and started swimming back along its West side.
Like during previous times I dove here, I had to swim up shallower to the top of the boulder pile to maximize the amount of time my air would last for the trip back to shore. There were lots more young plumose anemones and swarms of black rockfish up here.
So the amount of fish and invertebrates here is definitely increasing, although I'm not sure that the grey silty-ness of this area will ever go away.
