5/16/2008 Mount Chamberlin aboard Phil Sammet's RIB by Alberto Nava

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5/16/2008 Mount Chamberlin aboard Phil Sammet's RIB by Alberto Nava -- [View in Reports Page]

Bottom Team:	Susan Bird, Alberto Nava
Visibility:	40' - 80'	Time:	10:30 AM
Temp:	46F - 50F	Surge:	3'
Max Depth:	222FSW	Avg Depth:
Bottom Time:	0:30	Total Time:	1:30
Bottom Gases:	18/55	Deco Gases:	EAN50,O2
Backgas Config:		Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
After several weeks of teaching Fundamental Sue and I finally had time to go a do a fun dive :-). We went out with Phil today. Conditions looked good in the morning so we decided to venture out to a new dive site, K3. This is one of the 3 peaks in Mt. Chamberlin near Yankee Point area. We had dove K1 and K2 but never K3. The area near this site looked very promising. The pinnacle is located on the West side of the Mountain at the wall’s edge. The top is about 120ft and to bottom is +280ft. We descended using our scooter to flight the 1 knot current and after a couple of minutes got sight of the peak. From there we glide down to about 220ft and settled down while preparing for our ride. We headed south a little bit looking for a double reef at 230ft but we were not able to located so we head north on the wall. The topography was incredible with an almost vertical wall full of the typical deep water invertebrates: Elephant ear sponges, gorgonians and several basket stars. We had to keep an eye on the depth gauge as the abyss keep tempting us to go deeper, 222ft was the max depth we allow it this time. Once we go to the end of the wall we found a great terrain. There was a cavern/tower style structure on the wall with several swimming through and some very large quillback rockfish. We saw at 6 on them in that area. The view was mesmerizing with the top of the structure at 150ft and not visible bottom from where we were. There was a very large school of blue rockfish hidden from the strong current. We found a small crack and ascended on it to a lower plateau at about 180ft. From there we headed east into a small canyon with a lot of water pushing on the invertebrates. There were several walls completely covered with gorgonians and the blue water with at least 80ft visibility, the view was breath taking. It was at some point difficult to believe we were not in Fiji. As we motored east we were hoping to make it all the way to K2 but we were not able to get there so we headed to another peak at 120ft. I’m not sure if we made it back to K3 or a small pinnacle btw the two, K2.5 ;-) From there we enjoyed our deep stops and decompression while looking at moon jellies and clear blue water. An amazing day out! Can we do it again soon? :-) Some maps in here