Dive #60 - Rich Torkington's Dive Log

Johnny and Janel are tidepooling near Puerto Penasco.
Photo by Lynn Dray in Mexico 1996

Dive Journal: Our surface interval is spent south and west of the point, and the winds make us both cold as we wait out 45 minutes or so on the boat. I’ve got nothing more than a towel to wrap up in. We can’t wait to get back in the water, and it feels great when we do.

South of the point, we submerge to around 45 feet and then slowly swim east. As we swim, I notice that our depth increases quickly to over 70 feet, and my computer is telling me that, with the residual nitrogen from last dive, we are very quickly approaching no-decompression limits.

Fortunately, our divemaster realizes this as well, and makes a slow sweeping turn to the south and then west, swimming upwards into mid-water. We follow him and unfortunately end up swimming almost 20 minutes at 40 feet in mid-water, with only a cloudy view of fishes and features on the bottom at 70 feet. It is blown navigation by the divemaster, but he says nothing about it on exit. Neither do we.

A few huge green morays are seen. The coolest sighting is a leopard patterned eel. I will have to invest in a Baja fishes book soon. The divemaster picks up a big spiral shell, which we later learn is for eating.