We've been spotting these guys now again this summer. They are rare to see and very shy, usually hiding away deep in a nook or cranny. They seem to like the wood pilings at Seacrest Park, our local after work divesite here in Seattle and do tend to come out a bit at night.

A few weeks ago, while testing my drysuit (and without camera, of course) we found 5 of them on one log!
I had to go back with my camera and see if I could hunt them down. There is one very large Warbonnet, maybe 12-15' (and they are only supposed to get to 10") at the end of the log. I call him "Big Daddy". Then there are usually a few smaller ones around. I found Big Daddy ok, and he was playing his usual games of diving into the interior of the log. But as I was swimming away, I saw another freely swimming down the log. But quickly lost it (her?) in the growth. I swam around for a while hoping they'd poke out again and searching the log I found it amongst the tunicates, sponge and anemones.

Having a clear go, I cranked off a huge amount of shots, as the D80 and z240 strobes can shoot very quickly. Shot with/without my woody diopter and between f/14-f/16 at 100th sec.

I was quite pleased with the results and on the way back almost missed one of the largest octopus I've ever seen. Apparently there are 3 of them hanging around, keeping the crab population in check. Macro to wide angle; Seacrest is an amazing site.

I spent the day with my friend Dave Hancock, aka "DiveAlert Dave" out on his boat on Sunday. We went to Lopez Island in the San Juans, north of Seattle to dive a couple of sites.

Long Island is a high current area and has lots of color and life. We also dove a nearby rock off the south end of Lopez Island that turned out to be pretty good, once we found the sweet spot. Weather and seas were calm after a huge storm the day before.

Shot with Nikon D80 Sigma 17-70 and Nikon 60mm macro, a Woody at times and 2x Inon 240z.