An excellent trip to San Clemente Island on 2/21/04
Beth and I joined Phil on a trip to celebrate his birthday!

We were treated to a beautiful sunrise at the South end of San Clemente on Saturday morning
Torpedo Ray swimming through the arch	A few divers hanging out above the arch.	Here he is a little deeper
This is the business side of a Torpedo Ray.	I found a Chromodoris macfarlandi.  Originally, I thought it was a Mexichromis porterae.	This Torpedo Ray was hanging out near the arch
ChrisM Stalks his prey on the last dive.	I'm really glad that I took the pics since I didn't have this guy in my collection yet.  This is # 21 in my SoCal nudibrach photo collection.	It's always great hanging out with friends while not in the water.  Here we are on our way home.
Aerial Photo of SCI with our 3 dives sites overlayed.  32 meter / pixel	The weather starts to turn bad so we cancel dive #4 and make the run for home.	Zoom of dives sites.  Imagery is from TerraServer.  Program is USAPhotoMaps.  8m / pixel.  Source image is 1m / pixel!

Dive Report courtesy of Frank-O:

After our fretting about the weather late last week, we had an amazingly smooth ride over Friday night. So smooth in fact that several of us expected to see the Catalina isthmus when we poked our heads out around dawn on Saturday ... but nope, Ray & crew had brought us to the south end of Clemente as planned where we were greeted by a colorful sunrise.

The plan was to wedge in four dives between 7 a.m. and lunchtime, then tootle back to Alamitos Bay. First dive was at Nine Fathoms or Arch Reef, which is around 80-110 ft with a top at ~60 ft. Highlight here was an electric ray that several folks saw. ChrisM said he saw a small dolphin from on-deck, but I couldn't see it in the water -- just a couple of sea lions or seals.

For the second dive we came around the corner of the Pyramid to Pyramid Cove, where there was an exensive field of kelp. Harbor seal shadowed one of the divers here.

For the third dive we headed up the east side a ways to a site called Little Flower. There was a wreck here in about 30 ft of water but Ray said the only thing left to be seen was the fuel cells.

I was looking forward to the fourth dive at a site called Purse Seine Rock, but alas, conditions started deteriorating rapidly toward the end of the third dive and, as Ray told us that 40-knot winds were on the way, he thumbed it and headed for home. Five and a half hours later we were back on the dock.

Vis was 30 to 40 ft where I was, and temps ran around 55 F. A nice time!

Additional Notes by Ross-O:

Dive 1:  Arch Reef, 8:15AM, Max 116, Avg 71, 36:20, 57F, 50-60ft vis, Torpedo Ray, Sea Lions

Dive 2:  Pyramid Cove, 9:57AM, Max 95, Avg 47, 48:40, 57F, 40-50ft vis, small cave w/ hundreds of lobsters

Dive 3: Little Flower, 11:29AM, Max 114, Avg 44, 57F, 40-50ft vis, new nudibranch, Torpedo Ray hiding in sand, pinnacles

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