Well, not exactly like seeing a unicorn, but close.

For whatever reason (luck, karma, bad timing, etc) I hadn’t seen a black sea bass in the wild in California.  But all that changed this weekend, when I saw a whole bunch!

Normally, we don’t see much awesome stuff during classes.  Hopefully during the swim around after skills, we see something, but as we are kicking up tons of sand and thrashing about in the kelp,  I fear we often scare off whatever might be seen, or at least offer them protection from detection.

So on Saturday at Goat Head,  we are bobbing up and down at the surface about to drop down, my assistant Scott says to me, “there’s one RIGHT underneath you, Lindsay” and he wasn’t talking about unicorns.  I put my face in the water, and could see the shadow of a beautiful, big, black sea bass!

Moments later, we drop down, and a student drops his weight pocket.  I see it shooting down, and motion to Scott to watch the students already descending as I recover the weight.  It’s spiraling down,  and suddenly I notice that a black sea bass it chasing it down too!

So we get face to face, he looks at me for a moment, I see his beautiful spots, then he gives me up for a bad job and swims off.  Very cool moment.

happy summer diving, divers!

xmerbabe

PS we also saw orcas on the boat to catalina!