I had wanted to do this dive at Madrona point, but like at most places in the area today (Nov. 4, 2008), the swell created great surfing conditions. So I came here figuring it would be more protected than the "point" dives. There were still some waves here, but it wasn't bad enough to keep me out of the water so I put on a close-up lens and stumbled through the mini-breakers. Once away from the white water, visibility was a promising 20 feet on the surface. I hadn't even made it 10 feet deep before two California sealions charged up and started swimming circles around me. They noticed I didn't have my wide-angle lens on my camera and they started laughing and high-fiving each other. I could hear them calling all their sealion, sixgill and orca friends to come see the diver with the macro lens. I couldn't give them the finger with my 3-finger mitts so I continued descending. At 20 feet, the visibility dropped to only 6 feet. All the silt on the bottom kelp was being stirred up by the surge. If the sealions were still there, I couldn't see them. At about 40 feet deep, the visibility cleared up to around 10-15 feet. On a day with bad visibility this place can look sort of dark and silty and gloomy. I went down to the sandy bottom at 80 feet, which was covered with thousands of nudibranchs. I think this species of nudibranch is actually a helpful and benevolent intelligent being. Whenever there's a day with disappointingly bad visibility, they pull out their cell phones and call everyone together to pose for divers with cameras. When you're finished taking pictures you can see them smiling and waving as you swim away. Eventually I made it to the wolfeel slope. I must have looked around every possible den in the area, but I only saw 2 wolfeels this time. One of them was shy, but the other came partially out of his den and seemed frustrated that I hadn't brought him anything. I ascended back through the murky layer and up to the shallows where another sealion swam by a few times to see what sort of lens I had on my camera.
