Octopus Hole Washington

So sometimes I let my buddy plan my dives. He tells me the plan, I decide if I like it, and I ride the wave. The first couple parts of the plan I didn't like, be at his house at 7am and drive for several hours to the site. I woke up feeling a little grumpy to say the least. So I arrive about 10 minutes late, and find that I’m going on a couple’s day of diving and general merriness that I just wasn't into. Great. Now I have to edit my language due to the mixed company.

Fast forward about 4 cups of coffee later, some decent tunes and I'm starting to feel like having some fun. We had heard that Octopus Hole was really not much better than Sund Rock, and I had also heard reports that there really weren't many Octo's there anymore, although there were some from time to time. Great. We arrive at the dive site, which isn't much more than a couple of turnouts along the Highway. Everyone is there so we meet and greet and gear up.

I’m definitely feeling better now that I’m in the water. We assign teams and begin our descent. Apparently someone in the first team is in a hurry, so we do what we can to keep the two teams together as we’re swimming through the silt trying to keep them in sight. Great. As soon as I see the sea whips at around 82fsw, I know we’ve missed the wall. It seems the others recognize this as well, so we all turn upslope and make our way back. My buddy and I stop to take a picture, and as we continue, we realized we’re alone. We continue in the general direction of the other team, catch one or two light signals and then they’re gone. We find the wall, which is barren. Void of life completely. We are now at about 45 fsw, and there is nothing to see to the right, left, above or below. I stow the camera, and just enjoy the feeling of being in the water. Out of boredom, I pull out my wetnotes and jot down a little sarcasm for my buddy. (see attachment 1) I get the finger. Now who has the bad attitude?

Then things start to look up. A small Ling is sitting on eggs. He’s not really aggressive but he just casually swims straight at my mask, and I put my hands up in defense. So for about 2 minutes, this ling does circles around me, first to the right, then the left as I helicopter around keeping him in view. Now that was entertaining!

We leave the ling, and I spot the unmistakable sign of an occupied Octopus den……Middens! There are crab shells everywhere, all in the same location from an opening underneath a huge rock. Inside is an average sized GPO. This would be the first of 8 Giant Pacific Octopus’ we would encounter on two dives at Octopus hole. We leave the octo and move on looking for more.

Apparently my buddy is now bored, so he makes a game of shining his light on my subject whenever I try to take a picture. I pull back, the light goes a way, I try to line up the shot, and the light comes back. Sometimes I want a new dive buddy. One of these days I’m going to lie during our bubble checks, “Uh, dude, you better sit this one out, there’s a LOT of bubbles” (Purge, Purge).

Dive two was pretty much the same, we missed the wall, found it again and split up to find a “lost” team member. My buddy and I split up, each with another diver and I was uneasy the whole dive. Maybe I'll keep him around after all. We did see all eight GPO’s, One Wolfeel, One Giant Red Dendronotid, and a large school of Striped Perch.

All in all, it turned out to be a GREAT day of diving, and yet another reminder that Unified Team Diving is a very relaxing way to spend time underwater.