Welcome to Total Bottom Time!

Total Bottom Time is my online personal dive log. A place where I can share my dives with friends, family, other divers, and the world. You can find out a bit more about me and see my full log of dives by clicking on my profile on the right. Feel free to subscribe to my dives via email or RSS.

Below are just some of my latest dives.

This was my first dry suit dive ever. I didn't have time to do a full course while I was in Seattle so the helpful folks at Underwater Sports (Edmonds location) suggested doing a dry suit "orientation" dive. Get geared up in a rental dry suit, get into the water, do some basic skills and buoyancy drills, then do a dive as usual. I got outfitted in a DUI dry suit with latex neck and wrist seals. It was bulky but reasonably comfortable.

Once I had all of my gear, we headed out to the Edmonds Underwater Park. It's another cove by a ferry terminal, Somewhat similar to Seacrest Park.

Edmonds Underwater Park

Underwater Park Map

Here I am in the dry suit with an extra 20 lbs of weight around my waist and 1 lb ankle weights. The ankle weights are there to help keep your legs low so the air in the dry suit doesn't gather at your feet and potentially send you to the surfaced upside down in an uncontrolled ascent.

DUI Dry Suit

When we were in shallow water I did some buoyancy drills to get the hang of the dry suit. I ...

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After a surface interval that included a walk across the street to get a coffee just to warm up, we headed back into the cove. We did a short surface swim before descending to the line that would lead us through our next dive profile. On that line was this rockfish or maybe it's a stonefish. Either way it had tucked itself by the mooring line of one of the buoys.

Rockfish (Stonefish?)

Among the kelp you could find nudibranch, if you looked carefully enough. This one was quite large and easy to spot.

Nudibranch

By far the highlight of this dive was our encounter with an octopus. I'd like to think it is a junvenile giant pacific octopus (GPO) because encountering a GPO is a bucket list thing for me. Realisitically it's more likely a common red ocotopus. Either way it's always great find a octopus.

Octopus (GPO?)

Shortly after our run in with the octopus we finished up the dive and headed back to the surface. Cold water diving is cold but it was definitely worthwhile.

 

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My first dive in Seattle with the good people at Seattle Dive Tours. After getting picked up from my downtown hotel, we headed out to Seacrest Park first thing in the morning. The dive site is just to the right of a ferry terminal.

Seacrest Park - Cove 2

Underwater Park Map

The water is pretty chilly, even in June, so I had a 7 mm wetsuit on with an extra 24 lbs. of weight on me and I was feeling like a snowman. All of that neoprene and weight had me feeling a bit clumsy when I got under the water. I took me a good 10-15 minutes to get the hang of my buoyancy.

The site is well marked with lines so divers can avoid the ferry coming and going. As we followed the left most line out to begin the dive, it was fitting that the first creature we ran into was a blue crab. 

Blue Crab

There's definitely no shortage of crab around Seattle. You could tell they were in season as it was pretty common to find crabs holding their young.

Crabs holding their young

There was also plenty of red and white plumed anemone ...

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