After the rebreather course with Jeff Bozanic, I decided to head down the Californian coast to San Diego. During DEMA I met quite a few people down that way and there was a large Artificial reef the Ex- HMCS Yukon that I wanted to dive and learn more about the ‘ships2reefs‘ movement in California. Jamie and Eline were also heading down to visit DUI drysuits, so we borrowed Jeff’s car to drive the couple hours down there. After the tour of DUI and learnt how they make drysuits, we went out for the best Mexican lunch ever with the founder of DUI and diving legend, Dick Long and the ever cheerful Faith Ortins.

Jamie and Eline had to head back to LA, while I stayed in San Diego with Beth Pickett, one of the 1988 North American scholars and her husband Spence and their two young boys. I used that time to catch up on lots of work that had piled up over the past two weeks, but I also got to go for my first surf in five months with one of their friends, Eric, a local lifeguard. During the past week I had been in contact with John Wagner, he is one of Glen Egstrom’s friends, champion body surfer and APS manta ray fin designer. He was keen to show me around and took me diving at La Jolla shores, there we swam through the caves along the cliff face. With a nice bit of surge as the sun was setting it made for a really enjoyable dive especially seeing the seals resting on the rocks and a couple that checked us out underwater. That evening, Michael Topolovac (Light and Motion founder and past scholar) and a local photographer, Abigail Smigal picked me up and took me to Steve Drogin’s house. Steve is an underwater photographer and entrepreneur and has his own submarine! The ‘Deep See’ has been working lately around Cocos Islands and Steve was showing some HD footage he just collected from depths of up to 450m. It was really impressive with some species seen that may be new to science!

John Wagner bought me tickets for a day diving the local wrecks aboard the Marissa; a great dive boat with a fantastic crew. There are three purposely sunk wrecks out from Mission Bay, hence known as wreck alley to the local divers. The biggest and most famous is the Yukon, a 111 m long ex-destroyer escort from Canada. It was scuttled in 2000 with the help from the San Diego Oceans Foundation and the ARSBC. The next day, John and I got to dive the wreck, with perfect weather it made for a great day on the water. The Yukon was impressive; with water clarity not optimal I did not see the end of the massive ship. The vessel is lying on its port side and can be somewhat disorientating for divers but we penetrated the ship and explored some of the rooms and hallways. There was lots of growth on the ship, with a healthy stand of kelp growing on the top and the rest of the available space covered in jewel and white plumose anemones. We followed up with a dive on the Ruby E, a smaller (50 m long), ex-coast guard cutter and the last dive on an old research tower which that was knocked down in a storm many years ago. After a great day diving with John and a feast of Chinese dinner with his family I then on to see an old friend.

Back when I was doing my research with baited remote underwater video stations for MPA surveys, I collaborated on a paper and spent a month living/working in Batemans Bay (NSW South Coast) with James Wraith from the University of Wollongong. He now lives here in San Diego and is working for the National Marine Fisheries Service. I spent the night at his house and the next day on the same charter boat, diving the Yukon again with James and his wife, Lisa! This trip was organised by Ian Martin – our rebreather instructor for Jeff’s course. He was instructing on the boat that day so it was good to catch up with him. It was great to do another dive on the Yukon to get a feel for the ship and collect some good video footage. The next dive was on another artificial reef – the El Rey, an old kelp harvesting boat, there I was able to get some photos.

The next few days with James were spent at his work, the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Centre at La Jolla. He is working with the pelagic fisheries group on the movement of pacific pelagic fish such as Sharks and Tuna. There I was able to learn about tagging studies and movement of such fish. I also spent some time with the guys using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for assessments of deepwater rock fish and abalone. They have been using video with parallel lasers to measure fish, similar to what I designed for compact cameras. But they were just setting up a small stereo video system for more accurate measurements of deepwater fish, something that I am very interested in.

After three days with James, I moved on to spend my last three days with Dick Long. He was the founder of DUI drysuits and famous for inventing the hot water suit for use in extreme depths. Now retired, he has been putting his energy and passion into the development of a network of artificial reefs for enhancement of the marine environment with Ships2Reefs International (www.reefingisnow.org). The deployment of artificial reefs provides valuable habitat for fish and other marine life and in areas like the southern Californian coastline, where the bottom is 85% sand or mud, increasing the habitat available can greatly increase the abundance of marine life. We had a good chat, swapping ideas and meeting other people involved in the artificial reef projects. During this time I also went to a REEF invertebrate identification course at for San Diego Ocean Foundation, where recreational divers learn how to complete biodiversity surveys.

The next day was spent with some more people I met at DEMA. Mike Shane works for HUBBS sea world research institute, located next to Sea World they are involved in a variety of marine science research. The institute has a large aquaculture facility, primarily growing white sea bass (similar to mulloway) for stock enhancement and also yellowtail kingfish. They are doing this very successfully and Mike has been involved in studying the movements of such fish. They do this by tagging over 300 000 juvenile fish a year with small wire tags in the fish’s head and electronically scanning caught fish to determine if they were previously released. He has also been using ultrasonic transmitters to detect the localised movements of such fish, but interestingly found out that the fish with transmitters are often eaten by seals and hence ends up tracking the seals rathe than the fish! Also working at HSWRI is a well known tagging scientist, who is also an Explores Club member, Brent Stewart. I met Brent in Exmouth when he was tagging whale sharks and it was good to see him again and have a chat about what he has been up to, like tagging beluga whales, elephant seals and whale sharks! That afternoon I again met up with Abi Smigal and had a tour of SCRIPPS Institute of Oceanography. We met the Dive Safety officer, Christian McDonald and diving research pioneer, Jim Stewart. I also had a look at the fish collection and got to hold the world’s largest fish, the whale shark and the world’s smallest fish, Paedocypris progenetica.

Afer saying goodbye to Dick Long and his wife, Bonita I headed back to LA, where I met up with Jamie and Brenna (the past NA scholar) for a celebration of Jamie’s birthday! The next day was spent with Glen and Donna Egstrom, they took care of me for the day and dropped me at the airport for my long awaited flight home. But it was not to be, as the flight was fully booked, United Airlines were asking people to volunteer their seats and fly a day later. So being the nice guy I am I volunteered, but not without $400 USD cash and a night and day at a local hotel!