Sea Sabres Scuba Diving club, Southern
California, Fullerton
Sea
Sabres
Dive
Spots
Oil
Rig, Catalina Channel
The Oil Rig Ester
September 18, 1999
By: Walter Marti
Recently, I’ve been hearing
a lot about diving the oil rigs off of Huntington Beach. Actually, they are almost half way to to Catalina. We added this Westerly dive midway during
the year and I thought, why not see if we can take the Westerly out to the
rigs, and we all could see what the fuss is all about.
I made three dives on the oil rig Emmy in 1980 and
have fond memories of them. She is just
off shore of Bolsa Chica State Beach in 40 feet of water. The piling were covered in scallops and
mussels. Lots of fish congregated
thereabout. I was a killer back then
and didn’t look for the finer life forms.
I even took my kayak out of Bolsa Chica. If, I enjoyed it so much why did I wait
almost two decades to return? I have no
idea!.
With Captain Jim Ingram at the helm of the Westerly,
we left San Pedro at 7 am and headed to the farthest oil rig, the Ester. She sits in 700 feet of water. I was anxious to take video. I was not hunting for halibut. So, I didn’t feel a need to go to the
bottom. It was a gloomy overcast day
and it stayed that way. The water was
unusually flat. As we approached the
Ester, Jim radio the oil rig and politely asked permission to dive. They told him which side we could dive on,
and which side to stay away from. We
stayed away from the side was where the tender boat docked. This way we wouldn’t hinder their
operations.
We had 15 divers aboard. Jim backed the boat near the rig and in groups of four or five,
we jumped off and swam to the structure.
We beheld great visibility, considering how diving has been this year.
If we would have had sun, it would have been fantastic. I emptied my BC and started downward. The top of the piling were covered in
mussels, at 20 feet the corinactis, strawberry anenomes, of every shade and
variety of red covered everything.
Absolutely incredible to look at.
Nestled within the corinactis were scallops. Not the occasional scallop, but everywhere. I have a shot in my video where there is a
legal limit just within view. I
continued my decent. I was taking the
express elevator down. At 100 feet the
occasional metridium could be seen.
They are the large white plumed anenomes that are usually seen in
Monterey. I was dropping like a
rock. I hit my BC inflator and drysuit
inflator and stopped my decent. I was
in such awe at seeing these metridiums.
At 120 feet they started to come out in numbers. At 145 feet they were covering the pilings
and were about two feet apart. I shot of
some quick video of them and started to take the elevator up. The no decompression limit isn’t real long
and I didn’t want to be making a decompression stop. Besides I still had a whole day of diving to look forward
to. As I ascended, I was enthralled at
the beauty of everything. The
nudibranchs, dorids, brittle stars, small fish and numerous other
invertebrates, that I have no idea what they are called. As for big stuff, there were large sheephead
and rockfish hiding withing the piling. Nearing the end of my tank I ascended
further up and was treated to a three ring circus of playful sealions. First they did their usual coy routine and
then they started with the ‘dive bombing’ and blowing bubbles as me. Another great video-op.
