Monday, June 9, 2008

Let's See, There's Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, and.... My Favorite, Ling Cod Season!


Let me introduce you to my little friend! If you'll recall, back when I started the blog I told a story about my psychadelic dive where a ling cod rammed me in the boat at about 75 feet down. Well, over the past year, he's rammed me two more times. So, I'm sure you can imagine how anxious I've been for Ling Cod Season to start!

Jeremy and I went to Three Tree Point with a speargun and a hawaiian sling to go after my arch rival and nemesis in the boat. When we came to the boat, we swam around to the backside and peeked in the hole where the motor used to be mounted. Virtually every time we've come to the boat, we have seen him inside the boat through this hole. Well, as luck would have it, he's not there. Needless to say, I'm upset because I've been waiting so long to get that little sucker! So we start looking all around the boat and inside it where there lay several boards and chunks of cement. Just as I'm about to give up, I see in one of the holes of the debris the classic brown and black spots of my Ling Cod! I signal to Jeremy and he takes the shot....

Pow, right in the kisser! The fish is squirming and jerking! Direct hit! So we begin the tedious process of lifting off the debris to get to him. By the time we finally get to the fish, I have my light in one hand to help Jeremy dig and the hawaiian sling and debris being held up in my other. Jeremy gets the last board out of the way and... it's not him! It was a smaller one!

I'm ready to throw a tantrum right there when all of a sudden, BAM! That dirty son of a gun rams me upside the head. AGAIN! I reach out and try to catch him in my hands to no avail and drop everything I'm holding to go after him over the back of the boat.

Jeremy, meanwhile, is reloading his speargun (now in the dark since I left him to go after the devil fish!). I swim over the back of the boat and down to the hole in the back as I'm sure that is where he has gone. Nothing. At this point I'm screaming in rage that the little sucker rammed me again and took off! Ling Cod season only lasts two weeks and I'm sure at this point that I've missed my chance. Defeated, I decide to go back over the rear of the boat to relay to Jeremy what happened. I come up over the top just in time to see that the spawn of satan has landed right in front of Jeremy who takes the shot and nails him!



Of course, we brought him, the other Ling, and a few Greenling that we also speared home for dinner. As we're taking in the first bite of beer-battered happiness, I thought to myself, "Well, you've waited a year for this. Was it all worth it?" ABSOLUTELY! Here's to Ling Cod Season!


-Swimmer Todd-

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

My 100th Dive!


Well, that was a hell of a great year! It's amazing how far we've come since getting certified last April. I celebrated my 100th dive at The Wreck at Taylor Bay with Rob and Jeremy. We started our day by diving Steamboat Island Wall (AWESOME!), then went on to Taylor Bay (Also AWESOME!) and finished our Perfect Dive day at the wreck at Tolmie. That is one of my favorite wrecks in the sound and it was great to see it again.

The day went really well - you can tell because Rob had numb lips for 2 days! As you can see in the Rob Licks section, he made out with several new invertibrates. Hopefully, they won't come after him for child support at some point in the future, because he doesn't make close to enough money to cover all of his unholy unions!

So, here's to you, Perfect Dive Team, and here's to another great year of diving!

-Swimmer Todd-

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Dive and Travel Expo!

What a great weekend! We spent our time representing our website http://www.theperfectdive.com/ at the first annual Dive and Travel Expo! As you can see in the picture, we don't like to do anything halfway, so we built and incredible booth. That fine looking underwater wall you see behind us with our banner in it was built over the past couple of weekends - not too shabby! We had a great showing and really did well at the expo. We received free charter trips and set up several new advertisers on our site. The best part was the exposure - thousands of people now know who we are and what we're about. I have to give a special "Thank You" to my wife, Alynn, for working the booth for us on Saturday morning while we were at the Treasure Hunt dive as safety divers. She's totally hot, so she drew a great crowd. If you didn't get a chance to make it to the Expo, we'll see you at the next one a year from now.

You'll notice how incredibly sexy our shirts are and, that's right, they have our names on the sleeve! How official can you get?! We've had so many people ask about getting one that we have decided to start working on our own line of ThePerfectDive shirts! So keep your eyes out and you'll be seeing them in public soon!


-Swimmer Todd-

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Northwest Dive and Travel Expo!


May 3rd and 4th will be the first annual Dive and Travel Expo at the Tacoma Convention Center. "So, what?" you ask. I'll tell you "So What" - WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A FREAKIN' AWESOME BOOTH! That's right, you can see the creators of http://www.theperfectdive.com/ and hang out with us. We'll have cool giveaways and a large screen TV! We'll see you all there. Be sure and stop by the booth and register for the website. You can learn more about the expo at http://www.nwdiveandtravelexpo.com/

-Swimmer Todd-

Friday, April 18, 2008

It Makes A Man Proud!

My 7 year old, Elizabeth, drew this for a school assignment! There are few things that these eyes have seen that have touched my heart so! What a great kid!

-Swimmer Todd-

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Rob Drew This!


Not only can he grow body hair like a freakin' sasquatch, he's also got mad skills with a sketch pad! Click on it to see close up how much work he did on this. Nice job, Rob!

Monday, April 14, 2008

My Turn With The Camera!

Jeremy let me use his camera on Saturday while we were diving at Three tree. It was a lot of fun, although it does change the dynamics of the dive. It is strange to see the dive through the little screen on the camera. It is also a trick to hold perfectly still to get that great shot. Well, here's a few of my favorite shots. Hope you like them!

-Swimmer Todd-

Sea Urchin


Moon Snail


Nudibranch


Wolf Eels


Nudibranch


Starfish


Baby Jelly


Sea Urchin

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Just how bad do you have to go after diving in a dry suit?


Bad enough that you'd be willing to use the WOMEN'S RESTROOM! Right, JoJo! A word of advice --- should you ever have to go so bad that you decide to go in the women's restroom, make sure your buddies have put away the camera first!

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

One Year Certification Anniversary Dive!



We went diving last night at Three Tree Point to celebrate our one year anniversary since we got certified. It was a great dive! As you'll see in the pictures, we got a lot of uncommon shots all in one dive. One year of diving down, fifty more to go! Thanks everyone for making it a great year!

-Swimmer Todd-

Noodling Sculpin!


My buddy Rob and I were swimming along in the shallows looking at the beautiful sea life that can be found among the low lying kelp in the Puget Sound waters while we fulfilled our safety stop requirements toward the end of a great night dive. Out this night were many of the common creatures: tubesnouts, gunnels, sand dabs, all sorts of shrimp, and a wide variety of sculpin. Sculpin, at least most species, are completely harmless and they vary greatly in color and pattern from one species to the next. Among the most drab and unremarkable is a sculpin called a Staghorn Sculpin. They are a small olive/grey bottom fish with no markings to speak of and they tend to hide in the sand near kelp to pick off small creatures in the dark.

Now Rob and I love the interaction with the sea life during our dives so it was not unordinary to see Rob wiggle his little finger in front of some creature as though he were a deformed angler fish. And it was equally ordinary that the fish ignored his attention and either hoped he would go away or moved to a better hiding place. But this particular night would change everything.

Rob spots an attentive Staghorn sculpin sitting in a plate-sized clearing of kelp. Ever so gently he moved his hand up through the kelp so as not to alarm his target, with his finger extended. He stops a few inches away from the sculpin, who measured a whopping 8” at best, and began to wiggle his finger as though it were a chubby worm. One wiggle…the staghorn glances at him…Two wiggles…the sculpin lines himself up, ready to pounce…Three wiggles and POW! that tiny fish unleashed his ravenous fury upon Rob’s finger, engulfing it past the first digit and began a side to side head shake like those seen on Wild Kingdom’s “Mature Audience Only” programs! It startled Rob so much that he squeeled through his regulator, eyes wide, finger erect while the sculpin tried with all his might to remove the end of his digit. And just as quickly as it had pounced, the fight was over. The Staghorn realized it had bitten off more than it could chew, released his captive and darted off into the dark. Rob immediately inspects his finger and looks at me, wide eyed and amazed, then shows me the damage. Sure enough, that sculpin lacerated the entire end of his glove’s index finger and made off with a hunk of it. Dang! Sculpin One – Rob Zero! So I’ve been asked “what was I doing while my buddy fought for his life?” Well, I was laughing so hard that my mask was flooded. We tried it several more times that night and got two more attacks. Viscous little fish they are!


- Jeremy -

Friday, April 4, 2008

The Psychadelic Dive


When I was a fairly new diver, we decided to go to Three Tree Point with several other divers to go looking for a Sixgill shark. Though Sixgills are seen with a certain amount of frequency in the Sound, you could still go a lifetime and not have any luck finding one. So, we decided to raise our odds! We took a plastic bag full of fish parts and guts with us to lure in the six gills. Where did we get the chum? The Korean grocery store, of course! They thought we were buying it to eat - eeeww. Anyway, Jeremy was slowest on the uptake when we called "not it", so he was voted to be the chum. Wait, I mean carry the chum... my bad! If you've been to Three Tree before, you'll know that there is a series of buoys that go out and from those buoys, you can get your bearings to a sunken boat on the south end, which is where we were headed. Well, that's where our troubles started. You see, if you go to the second of three buoys, you will drop down to a shallow 40 ft. That was our intention, but somehow in the dark, we dropped down at the third buoy which goes down to 70 ft. Well, my buddy and I decided to do the descent without our lights (this is late at night, mind you) so that we can watch the bioluminescents on the way down. We also wanted to go down fast, so we didn't add any air into our BC's. Well, we got our wish - we were screaming straight down so fast that we didn't have much time to do anything but plug our noses and blow out just to clear our ears. We turned our lights on about 10 ft off the bottom and laid on the air to stop from landing on our knees... So far, so good. The rest of the divers joined us and we got ready to go toward the sunken boat. I looked down at my computer to get my depth and realized that my computer is not working. I tried to turn it on again. Nothing. I showed my buddy and let him know that he would be leading since my computer is a no-go. Well, we started to swim south and I realize that I am narked. Now I'm not talking about a small buzz, I am talking about Woodstock, get naked and sing Beatles songs narked. It was FANTASTIC! Everyone continues on to the boat, me flying behind with a giant smile on my face. Before long, we get to the boat, which I know in my head (which has now cleared up unfortunately) is at about 75-80 ft deep. But we didn't go any deeper since we left the buoy. Without my computer to tell me that our original descent was to 75 feet, I have no idea that we weren't at 40 ft. Now, I'm feeling totally lost. Our chum bucket, Jeremy swam out a little ways past the boat and starts to slash the chum bag open with his knife. The rest of us are hovering a safe distance away with cameras and lights ready just in case Jeremy gets eaten. A minute into this, however, someone spots an octopus by the boat, so we all turned around leaving the chum, Jeremy, covered in blood and guts in the pitch black! You're welcome, Jeremy! That's what friends are for. You can imagine it didn't take Jeremy long at all to catch up with the rest of us. As we're watching the octopus and hoping that a shark will come swimming by, a Ratfish swims up close to me. Ratfish are in the shark family and have no bones, just cartilage. They also have an extremely poisonous spine on their top fin.



Now, I had been fairly warned about the spine, but no one warned me about how flexible these suckers are, so being the brilliant diver that I am, I decide to catch the Ratfish just behind the spiny part so that he can't get me. Well, I'll be danged if those little buggers can't fold backwards on themselves! I hope that God can't understand swearing under water any better than those close by, because I hollered out some French words when that spine hit my knuckle! By this point, my buddy and I were starting to run low on air, so we decided to start back in. I asked him how much air he had left as we paused on our way up and he signaled that he had 500 lbs left. The rule in scuba diving is that you should be surfacing with 500 lbs remaining. Are we surfaced? NO. We're looking at a starfish! So, again, I ask him how much air he has and he signals 500 lbs. "What is he doing?" I'm thinking. "Why are we not headed up?" Once you get to 15 ft of water you have to do a 3 minute safety stop. I'm thinking that my buddy is going to run out of air long before we even get to 15 feet, when all of a sudden he turns upward and swims straight up! Just as I reach up to grab his fins to stop him from shooting to the surface and getting bent or embolizing, I realize that he is floating on the surface. We were already at our safety stop, which is why we were looking at the stupid starfish! In the end, I learned a few lessons from this dive:


1) Nitrogen Narcosis is AWESOME!


2) Dive Computers are my friend.


3) Jeremy really stinks as a chum bucket.


4) Ratfish are more flexible than a gay Russian gymnast.


5) Ratfish stings are really quite painful and take a long time to heal.


6) Lastly, I learned that should you happen to grab a Ratfish by the tail and get stung, not only will you receive no sympathy from the other divers whatsoever, but they'll probably get a good laugh out of it and one might even fart on you - ROB. Nasty, man. Nasty.

- Swimmer Todd-

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

We Want So Badly to Hate Redondo, But...

So here's the thing. We certified at Redondo and grew to hate it by the time we were done. Why? Because you can make the lap to see everthing there in 30 minutes flat. The VW is only cool the first couple of times that you see it, then it's like "Oh look. The VW. That's amazing." However, before all of you dive hippies that dive Redondo faithfully and love it like the freckle-faced, redheaded step-child that it is get your hemp panties all up in a bunch, I will admit that Redondo actually has some amazing marine life. While I do stand firm in my belief that Redondo is not nearly as cool as the hippies think it is, it has produced some amazing finds for us in the few weeks previous. Take a look at the show and you'll see what I mean.

-Swimmer Todd-





www.ThePerfectDive.com is taking the Northwest by storm!














Welcome to the first blog entry of The Perfect Dive! We have decided to create this blog because we have so many hilarious stories and want everyone to get a laugh out of it. We live here in the Northwest (Federal Way, WA) and started www.ThePerfectDive.com as a resource for divers everywhere. As of right now, we have many dive sites listed on the site for the Northwest (primarily Washington) and Monterey, CA. The site is designed to be interactive and allows everyone the capability of reviewing sites, adding sites, uploading pictures, and planning dives. So, sit down, relax, and laugh your tail fin off! Be sure to check out our first episode of "Rob Licks" on the side bar! That will be sure to get you laughing!