The Dive of a Lifetime - Big Sur, California

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Schmieder Bank - Big Sur, California

Eight years ago, I made my first diving trip to Cozumel, Mexico. Cozumel is a little island off the Yucatan Peninsula famous for drift diving and deep walls.

I mean really deep. It is routine to dive over 100' and occasionally some of our more fearless (some could say foolish) group would make the plunge to over 200'. I was one of them.

Fast forward six years, and I am a much more cautious diver, no longer fascinated with the cheap buzz of nitrogen narcosis. I can thank my camera for that. The best light for wide angle photography is often in the first sixty feet. Your air lasts longer, too. Shallow diving compliments my style of underwater photography just fine.

In June 2007, my shop charters a boat to take us diving along the Big Sur coast. For years we spent most of our time south of Lopez Point, only occasionally making our way up towards Pfeiffer Point. This year, however, we made the trek further north to try our luck with a site known as Schmieder Bank.

And it is deep.

Schmieder Bank lies approximately four miles off of Point Sur, the iconic mass of a rock with the lighthouse. Four miles offshore is not your typical distance to a dive site along this stretch of coast, maybe more like 0.5-1 mile...tops. So we are "out there". Heavy currents are highly possible, as is the chance the fog will settle in resulting in surface visibility being reduced to less than 1/4 mile.

Schmieder Bank also is about 140'...at its shallowest. It drops off to 200' at least. It was now time for the foolish and the fearless to come together as one. A little experience over the years taught me to have a better plan for this type of dive, and my buddy and I executed it perfectly.

Of course, this plan meant only about 8-10 minutes at the top of the reef before we needed to head back to the surface.

The visibility was epic, easily 80' or more. The massive stands of orange, pink, and purple hydrocoral, although found at shallower depths, rarely get so dense and large. They need currents to feed them, and the depth to protect them from storms. Clouds of blue rockfish mixed with deeper species blanketed the reef. For many of the divers that made this dive, it ranked as one of the best they had ever done.

Looking back, I'd have to agree.

Nikon D200
Nikkor 10.5mm G fisheye
1/20sec @ f4, ISO 100
Aquatica Housing, 8" Dome Port
2 Sea & Sea YS-120 strobes, 1 at full and 1 at half power

Taken on: November 17, 2007

Tags:

Schmieder Bank

Big Sur

California

underwater

SCUBA

diving

offshore

deep

reef

temperate

hydrocoral

Stylaster californica

blue rockfish

Sebastes mystinus

strawberry anemones

Nikon D200

Nikkor 10.5mm

fisheye

Aquatica

Sea&Sea

Jim Patterson Photography

FiNS

OrcaDivers

jimpattersonphotography.com

Corynactis californica

club-tipped anemone « less

Sets appears in: • Underwater California

Groups appears in: • Big Sur, California • Cold Water Diving more » • A "Quality Only" Club • FiNS Group • EL MAR Y SUS PLAYAS • Wild California « less

Camera: Nikon D200, f/4.0, 1/20 sec, 10.5mm (=15mm), ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D200
Aperture:	f/4.0
Exposure Time:	0.05 sec (1/20)
Focal Length:	10.5mm (35mm equivalent: 15mm)
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Center-weighted average
White Balance:	Manual
Color Space:	Unknown (-1)
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows
Show full info

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