I was in Berkeley with my kayak on Thursday morning with wonderful weather but not much time. I didn't want to go in the bay in such nice weather, and getting to the ocean would add 2 hours to any trip. So I just went to work early. I checked the Weather Underground TELNET page and the predictions for Friday were not as good as the calm water I was missing. So I planned to go abalone hunting Friday morning before the weather got worse.
Even though I set my alarm for 7:00 am, I didn't hit the beach until around 9:00 am. The usual morning hassles of answering phone calls and feeding the cats and such. At home there had been no breeze at all, at the beach there was very little, but out to sea I could see whitecaps marking testimony to the 20 knot wind the weather service had predicted. Since I was paddling into the breeze, I didn't mind since I figured that it would help blow me back to the beach when I was tired. The waves were still mild, so I got into the water at Russian Gulch with no problem and headed north to my favorite abalone diving hole.
On the way I saw a lot of what I though were unusual cormorants flying by. They flew like cormorants, but were a little grayer with a ring around their necks and white patch on their belly. When I got close to a huge flock of then sitting on the water, I discovered that they were pacific loons. They made an occasional flute-like noise but not often enough to produce a continuous sound even in such large numbers. A couple of them surfaced near me and dove away. One came up with a small fish in its beak! I checked later and found that they summer up in Alaska and Northern Canada. This seems kind of late for migration, but I guess all these birds were on their way north. That's the direction they flew off in when they got nervous about me going between them and the ocean.
As I came around the rock marking my favorite abalone spot, I saw two people coming down the hill from way up on Vista Point. I assumed that they were a couple abalone divers and that I would have some company, but they disappeared. I assumed they must have gone down to the shore on the other side of the big rock.
I started to tie up the kayak, but had a lot of trouble catching and holding a kelp head long enough to hook onto it. I decided to hit the beach first, since getting into all the equipment is so exhausting out in the water. I'm not sure it was much of an improvement, although putting on the hood did seem a lit easier sitting on shore. But I launched the kayak without the flippers and had to put them on at sea, and it seemed foolish to put the mask on and hinder my vision before I got back out to the kelp. I could have just gone diving from the shore, but the one time I did that it seemed a long swim back to shore when I got tired. I wanted the kayak to hold onto and store abalone in. Once I got in the water, tying the kayak to the kelp was easy.
I dove in water that I think was under 5 meters. The visibility was OK, but probably under 2 meters. I could see the bottom before I ran into it this time. A friend of mine describes diving in really turbid water as "mud diving", and suggests bringing a zip-lock bag of clean water with you. "That way, you can hold it in front of your mask and double your visibility"! That was not necessary this time. I found one abalone on my first dive, but failed to pry it out of the crack it was jammed into. I found two more on my third dive, and managed to get one of them. The next two dives I didn't see any, accept I did see what looked like an undersized one. Until now, I have never seen an undersized abalone. Even if this little one was just a rock, I passed it up and kept looking for a legal sized one. After that dive, I collapsed across the kayak to rest out of the water for a few minutes. I decided to dive only two more times, and if I could get two more, then great. But I really wanted to get at least one more.
On the next dive, I found none. My usual technique is to dive down until I see kelp, and follow that to a rock. Then I follow the rock down to the crack between two rocks, and follow this gap between the rocks until I find an abalone or run out of air. I try to think like an abalone. On this last dive, I saw an overhanging shelf on one rock. Aha! If I were an abalone, I would want to hide upside down under there! Sure enough, there were 3 big ones under this shelf. I rotated until I was in a good position to reach them; upside down, stretched out at an angle from the shelf, with my head down near the bottom. I pried one off easily, and wondered if I had enough air to pick off another one. While I was improving my grip on the loose one, the swell from a wave came by and pulled me sideways a half a meter or so. My forehead banged into a rock. Hard enough to leave a tender spot for a few days even through the neoprene hood, but not hard enough to leave a bruise. I decided that I had enough abalone for this trip and headed back up.
When I got back into the kayak, I discovered I was more tired than I would have guessed. Taking off all the equipment at sea is as tiring as trying to put it on. Bending down to take off the flippers while wearing 14 millimeters of foam around my middle takes a tremendous stretch and grunt. I'm sure my blood pressure shoots way up on that maneuver. I had to put the mask back on and get back in the water to untie the kayak from the kelp. I finally got all the diving equipment stowed and the paddling equipment back on (flotation vest, radio, and hat). I started back out to sea with slow tired arms.
As I was paddling out from behind the rock, I caught sight of the two people who had come down the hill when I arrived. They were also cleaning up to leave, from on top of the rock! They must have been hikers who came to have a picnic brunch with a great view of an (almost) isolated stretch of shoreline. I wonder if they were looking down at me the whole time I was paddling around in the water. Well, at least they saw me on a successful trip.
The wind had in fact increased quite a bit while I was diving. I went a little way out to sea across the wind and waves, then turned and took it easy. The wind and waves were both going back to the beach and helped me get back in short order. But I was tired enough that the trip still seemed fairly long. I thought I would want to collapse on the beach for a few minutes, but instead I just made two trips back to the car. One trip with all the gear, including the weight belt around my hips. Those yuppie joggers who wear "heavy hands" should walk a mile in my shoes, I mean belt. My "heavy hips" weights made my thighs tired and weak. I changed back into street clothes, then made a second trip to carry the empty kayak back.
Marty's father, Russell Eckert, was out visiting for two weeks, and I went on this abalone diving trip to get one to cook him for dinner. This is why I was in a hurry to get one before the weather got worse and why I took the time to do it this morning. It turned out not to be necessary: The swells at sea did not turn worse over the weekend, so I could have put off the trip until Saturday. One reason I was so tired was because this abalone hunt took 3 hours longer than I expected. This made me late for work on a day when I had planned to leave early for a dinner with Marty and her father. So now I'm in the doghouse at work for getting there late and leaving early to make up for it! But Russell has never had abalone before, and did enjoy the meal.