CopyRight @ 1997
Some of the most beautiful scuba diving is in the harshest places... It was a beautiful clear morning when we woke up on the dive boat, "Peace". There was a golden sunrise over the water of the channel as we passed between Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa islands. As we went behind the island, the sun was hidden again. Perhaps fifteen minutes latter, we got to see another sunrise over the island. It was November, but it was warmed by the Santana winds that also pushed the strong, cold winds from the north to farther off shore. It was time to eat something, have some coffee, get dive gear ready and suit up. The morning was still a bit chill, but you are too busy and excited to much notice it. Santa Rosa Island is a 9 mile square, somewhat mountainous island, about 40 miles south west of Santa Barbara. The Northwest side of the Island where we were, aims up past Point Conception, so it is completely exposed to the weather coming down the Pacific coast that goes all the way up to Alaska. Winds and waves build up on the way. The average wind speed here is 28 knots... all year long. Sometimes though, you can catch it when it is calm, or what passes for calm here. The reefs of Talcott Shoal extend along that whole side of the island, from the island itself, to miles off shore. It's a huge area. It's great, wide open diving. It is remote and harsh, so it isn't spoiled. It might be my favorite place to scuba dive. You never know what you will see out there. This was mostly a lobster hunting trip and the divers were a rather hardcore group that dove through the winter lobster season. The way to hunt lobster is to swim pretty much as fast as you can, looking in cracks, and under rock ledges. You can only take lobster by grabbing them with your hands, so you need good gloves for protection. You want to surprise them, but they are wary of things that want to eat them, so during the day they stay where they can escape with a flick of their tail. You may even see a lot of lobster when diving, but not be able to get near to any of them. If you can get close enough, a sideways sweep with your arm may get them without tangling with their antennae. It usually doesn't work that easily. The lucky thing is that they like to hang out together so they seem to chose their holes by committee, and don't always choose a good one. Then you might have a good chance to get them. On a good day of four or five tanks of air, a good lobster hunter can get 4 nice bugs. On some days it's a bust, and on some days, it's a full bag, though the limit is 7 lobster in a day. The engines idled, the sign for the stragglers to get out of their bunks. Most divers though were ready to go, some lined up at the gate already. On this boat, in a place like this, during lobster season, the divers are serious. They want to get off the boat as fast as possible. Whoever gets there first, gets the lobsters, so I managed to be fourth in line to get off. Lee Price was acting as dive master for this charter. Of course, the deck hands, James and Woody, would be keeping a close watch too. This is a boat that does not want ... "incidents". The gate was open and divers were jumping off as fast as the diver in front of them was clear. I wasn't wearing a timer, so before I jumped off, I asked James to time my dive. As they say, "Jump in the water, enter the food chain." This isn't diving where you jump in and float around on the surface checking your buddy and your gear. Stepping off the deck, you hit the water hard, feet together, then turn over and swim straight down. I hit the bottom and swam away from the boat quickly, heading away from the island. It was pretty clear at 85 feet deep, but in the early morning light, it was still dim at this depth . At this depth, with an eighty cubic foot tank, it was not going to be a long dive. At Talcott Shoal, the bottom terrain is a series of low rocky ridges that run parallel to the island. It looks like a topography map under water. You are going to run out of air before you are going to run out of ridge. If the ridge sticks up high enough, there will be a ledge on one side. That is where you are looking for lobster. I'll also take a crab if it gets in my way. I have heard it called the hardest place to get lost underwater that there is, though you can do it. All the ledges run the same way, from 50 to 200 feet apart, sticking up from 1 to 4 feet, with some "pinnacles" sticking up maybe as much as 10 feet. You want to get away from the boat fast so you can pick a ridge no one has already checked out in front of you. That is why getting off the boat as fast as you can is important, and then swimming like crazy to get away from the other divers. A great way to dive it is to quickly head away from the boat, either towards or away from the island, until you find a ledge that you want to follow. Then you travel along the ledge, going up current until you have used about half your air. You then turn 90 degrees and head across the sand to find another ledge. It should not be more than 100 feet away. Then you swim the other direction along that ledge, with the current, in the direction of the boat. When it is time to come up, you should be near in line with the boat. You should be, but about one in four times, you aren't going to be near the boat and you are going to have a long swim back. If there is a current running, they will put out a thousand foot current line to pull your way back to the boat on. If you really come up far enough away, they may send the inflatable out to pick you up. You want to avoid that. The bottom is rocky, but also much of the area is sand, so while there is a lot of kelp in the area, there will be clear areas. In late summer the kelp paddies on the surface can get very thick though, even in the deep spots. In places, you will need to do a kelp swim over it. This is an amazing dive spot that just goes on and on. You never know what you are going to see, but there are always big black and orange sheepshead with their canine teeth. There will be rock fish and swarms of blacksmiths. There are small purple and big black urchins everywhere. There will be different kinds of kelp bass. The closer you look, the more life you will see and a lot of it is amazingly colorful. My favorite might be the brilliantly colored strawberry anemones that come in every imaginable color. You're here for lobster though, so what you are really looking for are lobster antennae sticking out from under the ledges. The way to get them is to be swimming along fast and make a grab before they can react. If you aren't fast enough, they will just back up out of reach into their hole. That's where the the lobster stay during the day, in front of the best safe spot they could find, so you had better be fast. Don't grab carelessly or you will get urchin spines stuck in your hand. Don't grab the antenna or legs. They will just break off. You have to get ahold of their body or ahold of the big bases of the antennae. Then... hang on and you might just manage to get it into the goody bag hooked on to your belt. There is an awful lot more that goes into lobster hunting than that, including years of experience, lots of failures and many empty bags. It is always an exciting sport, in such an incredibly beautiful place... when visibility is ok. Anyway..., I hit bottom and was moving fast, looking for a decent sized ledge. Air is precious at that depth and I only had an 80 cubic foot tank. No matter what, you absolutely have to control your breathing when hunting or you will empty any tank in minutes. I headed across the sand, over an occasional low ridge that would not have made a ledge. I was looking for a large enough ledge to follow when I saw an isolated rock the size of a VW, with a crack down the middle and a ledge at the base of it. I could see some big legs at the bottom under the ledge. I hit the rock and just snatched in and and grabbed a 4 pounder on the head. I have a good grip on any day, but when you grab a lobster, you clamp on to it. They can be pretty storng and will put up a good fight. This is when you have to be most careful not to start breathing hard. It was in the bag. I reached in again and pulled out a 6 pounder. I had a funny grip on it and could not force it into the bag. It had its legs spread out across the opening of the bag. I ended up in a tug of war, squeezing the bug between my bag and my chest, and pulling until the bag was pretty much over the bug. Then I closed the bag and clipped it. About this time, I looked back and a 2 pounder was walking out of the hole. He had had enough. He was too slow by a mile. I grabbed him on the back and bagged him. I quickly glanced at my air. It was a bit short, but nothing exceptional for me. I was sure that I had seen the legs of a bigger bug in the crack. I just figured it had taken the back door out. One thing about big bugs though, they don't always run. Sometimes they get cocky and want to fight back, or they just hunker down. I was very low on air and in a hurry, so I just jammed my arm in to feel around. My hand landed right on the back of the shell of the last big lobster... and that was that. He wasn't going to get out of my grip. I was already heading up as soon as I pulled him out. I knew it was a waste of time to check my air pressure again. Each breath told me I was low. On the surface I put that 7 pound bug in the bag and swam the short distance back to the boat. James said that I was down 18 minutes. Well, it was a very intense 18 minutes. That was about the best bag of lobsers I've ever gotten on one tank of air.
