Pacific Spiny Lumpsuckers (affectionately know as ‘Lumpies’) are one of the unique, and possibly most adorable, sea creatures found in the Salish Sea. Normally they can be found around dusk in the late winter and early spring hanging out on broad-leaf kelp and other vegetation in the shallows. The area south of the boat ramp at Redondo in Des Moines, Washington is historically a great place to see them.
I had an opportunity this week to dive with my friends Natalie and Ed at Redondo, but being an early afternoon dive, I didn’t hold out much hope for spotting any lumpsuckers. When I arrived at 2pm, Natalie and Ed had already finished their first dive of the day and were excited to share that they had in fact seen a lumpy, but not in the normal area that we have seen them in the past — they saw one out in the open on the rocky area just outside of the MaST Aquarium pier.
The Entry at Redondo
We started our dive on a very low tide with the plan to drop down at the end of the pier to see if we could find the lumpy again. After descending, we spent about 5 minutes shoulder to should looking for him with no luck. We then proceeded down the thick line to the sunken boat known as the carousel boat (due to the old carousel horse that now adorns the bow of the boat.) While down in the area of the carousel boat we saw a juvenile wolf eel (apparently a theme this spring for me) poking its head out from a tire. Then we followed the thinner line that leads from the carousel boat up to the Black Pearl (another sunken runabout that at some point in its life had “Black Pearl” stenciled on its side.) At the Black Pearl, Natalie found the cutest small octopus living in a shell — she is blessed with eagle eyes (or maybe just the patience) to spot small things that the rest of us miss.
After leaving the Black Pearl, we swam upslope to the observation pipe that the Redondo dive site is known for. We saw a nice Monterey Dorid nudibranch there, but not much else. As we had been in the water almost 45 minutes, we headed back up to the pier where we had started the dive. Of course, as soon as we got there Natalie started waving her light and pointing it at a point on the seafloor where, of course, the same chonker of a lumpy they had seen on their first dive was hanging out. We watched it swim around looking derpy for a few minutes before we swam into the shallows to end our dive.
This wasn’t your typical lumpy sighting, but as we’re getting towards the end of the season that we normally see them, I’ll take it.
Laurie and I were diving at Cove 2 in West Seattle this past weekend when we saw a sea creature we hadn’t seen there before — an adult wolf eel had taken up residence under a steel plate that was amongst the debris that is scattered around the site. I’ve seen juvenile wolf eels around Cove 2 before which are distinguishable by their brighter orange coloring, but this was the first time we’d seen an adult at the site.
Just a shy Wolf Eel
He was acting pretty shy and tucked up under the plate when we approached him, so I had to do my best to get a photo with my GoPro. You can see from the coloring that he is a young adult — he was probably about 3 feet long at this point.
Time will tell whether he sticks around or if he finds Cove 2 a little too busy for his tastes. I will keep an eye out for him though.
While Hawaii may not technically be in the Pacific Northwest, it is a very popular destination for PNW divers looking for a break from the cold, dark waters of the Salish Sea. My wife (Laurie) and I were able to get over to Kona on the big island of Hawaii for a week in February and spent some of that time enjoying diving in the warm(ish) waters.
We have a couple of operators that we regularly dive with while we’re in Kona. On our first day we booked the morning local 2-tank charter with Kona Honu Divers as a nice way to ease into the warm water. As always, their crew was on top of things as we showed up Friday morning. We’ve dove with them enough that we knew several of the dive guides on the boat and had a good time catching up with everyone. Our dive guide for this charter was Kevin and our group included four other more advanced divers. One of the others in our group noticed Laurie’s GUE mask strap and introduced himself as a GUE diver from the Bay Area, so the three of us teamed up for the day’s diving. We headed north out of the harbor to “Windows” for our first dive. It was a nice, relaxing dive with all the normal reef fish we see in Hawaii.
Reef fish doing reef fish things
We also saw a couple of sea turtles, including a big guy that was going to town trying to eat some of the coral.
The big guy after he finished nomming on the coral
After the first dive we all enjoyed the surface interval as we headed back to the south. The second dive site was “Turtle Heaven” which is right outside the harbor. Some people may complain about it being a “sell out” to dive right outside the harbor, but both “Turtle Heaven” on the north side of the harbor and the three “Honokohau” sites just to the south of the harbor entrance are great sites that offer the chance to see some big creatures like Tiger Sharks (that like to hang out outside the harbor for scraps the fishing boats put in the water) and Eagle Rays (which we have seen when shore diving from Dog/Alua Beach there.) Our luck was not with us for the big creatures on the second dive, but we still had a great dive and saw some huge bait balls without anything feeding on them.
Big Bait Ball
We also saw three frogfish on the second dive, including two hanging out together right at the anchor for the mooring buoy we were attached to.
Frog Fish Unite!
After the second dive, the ride back to the harbor was nice and short. We got our gear cleaned and packed up since our plan was to shore dive the next day. We also chatted with Sarah Milisen who was training a couple of students on the charter about Kona Honu’s blackwater dive since she is one of the experts on blackwater diving. Laurie has always been a bit leery about the idea of hanging under the boat at night in deep water waiting to see what comes out of the darkness, but Sarah conveyed just what an amazing experience it is, so we agreed to consider doing a blackwater dive on this trip.
After grabbing some lunch we swung by Kona Honu Divers to pick up tanks for shore diving the next day. Our plan was to hit our favorite shore diving site on the island, Puako End-of-Road, which is right up on the Kohala Coast where we normally stay when on the island.
We got up early on Saturday excited to explore the lava rock fingers that make the Puako dive site special but, unfortunately the surf was a bit to high for us to safely enter the water there, so we had to pivot and find another site. We have shore dived a couple of other places on the Big Island on our own, but none of them looked particularly suited for the wave direction and size, so we decided to try diving “Two Step” which is pretty far south of Kailua-Kona. It took us more than an hour to drive down there from Puako, but when we arrived we met some other divers that were getting packed up and they gave us some tips on how to dive the site to augment what Laurie had read online while we were driving down.
The biggest challenge we had at Two Step was getting in and out of the water, not because of the surf, but because of all of the snorkelers that were impatient with how slow we were getting our gear on and maneuvering our cylinders and everything. Once in the water and away from the shallows where the snorkelers were hanging out, it was a really nice dive with a nice reef drop-off covered in flat (plate) coral.
Typical Two Step Coral
We enjoyed our dive until we had to navigate amongst the snorkelers to leave the water. We rewarded ourselves for our patience with a guava and pineapple smoothie from the local resident who sells them from her front yard (highly recommended.)
As we were driving back up to Kailua-Kona to return our cylinders at Kona Honu, Laurie and I agreed that we would give the Blackwater dive a try, so we signed up while in the shop for the Monday night charter. We made sure to get an early dinner in our condo on Monday before meeting the boat at the boat ramp at Hokonohau Harbor at 6:15 on Monday. We were happy to learn that it was a small group (just two other divers) for the trip and that Sarah was our dive guide.
It was a felt a little weird as our captain, Andy, pointed the small boat straight offshore into the darkness as we left the harbor. It was about 20 minutes ride to chosen point offshore in approximately 5000 feet of water. After checking the wind and current directions, Sarah deployed a sea anchor to help keep the boat from being blown around too much. We each geared up and clipped ourselves to an 8 foot “Jon line” that was attached to a weighted tether line that dropped about 40 feet under the boat. There were firm instructions to not detach ourselves from the jon line unless directed by Andy (or if we saw the boat descending past us.) With that final instruction, we each back-rolled off the boat into the deep water.
The dive was everything that had been promised and more. It was amazing to see jellies, squid, larval fish, and more rising up out of the deep and into our lights. Different invertebrates would shift shapes instantly as we shined out lights on them. The highlight for me was seeing a pelagic seahorse (endemic to Hawaii), but Sarah was most excited seeing a female juvenile nautilus since it was so rare that her husband, Jeff, had not been able to get a photo of one for his definitive book on Blackwater Diving. After an hour in the water, it was time for us to each detach from our line and climb back on board. The excitement everyone felt as we recounted the things we had seen as we headed back to the harbor was intense. I tried taking some still photos on the night dive with my GoPro, but none of them came out particularly well. I’ll have to bring a better camera next time.
Since we had a few days left before our flight home, we decided to book a 2-tank charter with Kohala Divers in Kawaihae for Wednesday morning. We’ve had really good experiences with Kohala Divers since they operate in a part of the island that most other dive companies can’t reach due to the distance from Kailua-Kona, and their staff is phenomenal. Unfortunately this time the swell that had caused us problems trying to dive in Puako on Saturday was an even bigger problem and it was clear Tuesday afternoon that Kohala Divers was going to have to cancel their Wednesday charter. We quickly regrouped and booked the last two seats on Kona Honu’s Wednesday morning charter since there were likely to be sites farther south that a boat could tuck into out of the northwest swell.
When we arrived Wednesday morning, it was confirmed by our captain, John, that we would probably be diving to the south in Pawai Bay to avoid the swell. Kevin was our dive guide again and our first dive site was called “Air Tanks” near the old airport in Kona. The site was a nice lava reef with a big drop off into a sandy area. We saw several eels, but the highlight of the dive was a big Manta Ray coming up the drop off to do a fly-by of us. Laurie saw it first and her squeal of excitement caught my attention, so was I was able to get the GoPro out to take a video.
Rare Day Sighting of a Manta
Our second dive on Wednesday was also in Pawai Bay, but at the opposite side at the “Kawai Wash Rock” site. Like Air Tanks, it was a nice reef with a steep drop-off into the deep. It was a nice, relaxing way to end our diving for the trip. We saw more eels and frogfish. We though we had caught sight of a shark, but it just turned out to be a Milkfish which looks like a shark in a profile view.
Eels are our Friends!
In all, it was a very nice trip to Hawaii. We were able to get six dives in, but also didn’t try to dive every day, so we were able to also relax and have some nice down time. It was a nice balance compared to some previous trips where it was all diving, all the time. Given how easy it is to get to Hawaii from Seattle, we will continue to go back at least once a year. Our next trip is already scheduled for August 2025.
It’s always great when you can start the new year with a dive, especially when it is with a good group of friends. Yesterday our GUE Seattle community got together for a New Years Day dive in the afternoon at Cove 2 in West Seattle instead of our normal weekly Wednesday Night Community Dive.
We had eight divers show up on New Years Day for our first dive of the year. Some people wanted to practice specific dive skills and others of us were just interested in being underwater for an hour, so we split into two groups of four. The four of us that were more interested in just enjoying being below the surface included two relatively new divers and two more experienced GUE divers which was a nice combination. We had one of the newer divers lead the dive to gain some experience and he did a great job of leading us through our pre-dive checks and down the buoy line. We had a nice calm, relaxing dive which was really any of us could hope for.
I’m hoping for many more dives like it in 2025. If you are a certified diver in the Seattle area, consider joining GUE Seattle for our Wednesday Night dive. Information can be found on the GUE Seattle website at https://gue-seattle.org/wednesday-night-dives/.
2024 has been a great year diving for me despite not having the same number of dive days that I have in the past. I finished the year with 56 dives, 16 of which were our weekly GUE Seattle Wednesday Night Dive and 14 from Laurie’s and my trip to the Similan Islands in Thailand in February. I also had trips to Howe Sound (Vancouver, BC) and Hawaii (Big Island) to get in some diving outside of the Seattle area. I was also able to take the GUE DPV1 course in January to learn how to safely use an underwater scooter.
The trip to Thailand was simply amazing. The water was warm enough to dive in just shorts and a rash guard (which we don’t even get in Hawaii) and the water was crystal clear in most sites. Of course, the highlight was seeing a whale shark up close and personal at Richelieu Rock.
Work travel and a trips to the east coast and Europe over the summer got in the way of more regular diving. I’m hoping in 2025 I can get back to some regular weekend diving well.
I hope you will find the website useful for connecting with other divers in the Pacific Northwest. The goal is to allow the community of divers in the area to be able to communicate freely without requiring any specific social media platform. The first method we have available is through electronic mail lists that you can search and subscribe to at https://postman.pnwdivers.org, Enjoy!
