Nordic Joe's Seattle Snorkel Guide

The frosty shoreline added a sense of accomplishment to the winter swim.

Air Temp: 21 F

Weather: Mostly sunny

Tide:  Low, ebbing

Date / Time: 1:00pm – 1:40pm – December 7th

Location:  Ballard, Golden Gardens Right-Rocks / Mermaid Forrest

My first attempt to venture into winter waters was brief.

My buddy showed up this weekend, and as a birth-day favor to old Nordic Joe, he’s agreed to try out the winter water so that we can see what’s what with a winter snorkel here in Seattle.  I’m told that the water doesn’t change temperature much and that it’s all the same when we get in, so it may be a way to beat the crowded beach parking and get the whole place to ourselves.   My questions were: How will the conditions differ?   Given that the “unchanging temperature” advice I’ve gotten about the winter waters of the sound all comes from Scuba divers, How will the water temperature differ nearer the surface?  What’s the life like at this time of year?   Does it thin in the winter like life on land, or continue to flourish as usual, 365 days a year? Is the water really more clear in the winter?

To answer these questions, we suited up on a frosty morning and by 1:00 pm, we were at the water’s edge – looking upon a choppy and temperamental sea-scape.   The sun goes fast in the winter, and of the first things we noticed planning this trip was that it would be a challenge to align the ideal water conditions (ebbing high tide) and the proper light conditions (as near solar zenith as possible).  AS such, we found ourselves near zenith, putting into a VERY low tide.

Heedless, I splashed into it and quickly assumed the snorkeler’s position.   My face ached terribly for a long time.  There was almost no visibility at all.   I was reminded of the terrible Tacoma swim.  Pure green pea soup.  Of course, this was low-tide and I was still near the shore.  I began to swim out from shore and found clear water surprisingly close to the breaking waves.  I looked to shore.   My buddy was slowly acclimating, stepping sideways deeper into the sea.   My face continued to send me ice-cream-headache twinges of pain as my sinuses adapted to the chill.   Eventually I was conditioned to it, and my buddy was comfortable proceeding.   Neither of us appeared brave enough to call this thing off.

We both observed that the water seemed significantly colder.   Low 40′s.   My 5 mil suit, sans gloves or footies, seemed extremely spare now.   I wondered how I would fare over a longer swim.

Yet the winter also provided some merciful gifts to the Seattle Snorkelers.  The low tide yielded quickly to bright and clear water and we made out quite a distance from shore and prepared to head along the shoal’s edge toward mermaid forrest.   After about ten minutes of strenuous paddling, kicking, and full body swimming, we both observed that very little progress was being made along the shore. The wind-driven current today was too much.  We could go out from shore, or toward shore, but any progress northward seemed impossible.

We met as two bobbing torsos in the middle of all this freezing chop.

A-a-a--ah-awe-sss-s-s-so-me

“What do you think”? my buddy asked.

“I think we are much farther from shore than we meant to be.”

“Yeah.    These currents are terrible.”

I put my face in and observed the bottom streaking by as floated rapidly south and out to sea.

“Let’s give it one more try.” I suggested.

So we again bent our backs to the sky, bobbed our heads and legs like dolphins and swam with all but the last of our strength.  We made it maybe 300 feet in 10 additional minutes.

Giving up, we decided to let the current take us back to shore, swimming only against the outgoing tide, and we took our pleasure in the moon snails below which I tried several times to dive toward for a close-up photo.   We saw some needle fish, crabs, stars, and tons of moon snails on the sandy flats just near the beach itself.

Our final conclusions:  The water temperature is bearable, even in my modest suite, but gloves and dive socks would be a big help.  Maybe also a jacket.  Visibility is indeed better in the winter, even in low tide.  The sea’s temper however, is more of an issue during the winter when storms can roll in easy and strong winds can drive swift currents that could easily foul up the unobservant swimmer.

We decided, after playing near the beach for a while, to return on a day with calmer currents.

Swim Buddy's 14 mil core protection has him sitting pretty.

Moon Snail is about 1' long.

Jenny got off work early at 5:30 pm and so we took off, picked up with another rental suit for Jenny at ChekaLooka and into the water at Golden Gardens by 6:00.  There were the usual lookers-on and questions to answer for people before we put in:

“Yes, there’s amazing stuff to see out there.”

“Yes it’s cold, but not with a wet suit.”

And one new question:

“Yes, you need a wet suit.”

I forgot my hood but the water was extra warm today.  It felt like around 58 degrees at the shore, so I abandoned my boots and tried to go with naked head and feet.  My feet took it just fine, and that’s great news since my boots don’t really fit in my fins anyway.  I can probably skip boots for most of the summer if I am lucky.  Yet for me the hood was NOT optional.  I did a test swim of about 2 minutes and the ice-cream headache effect came back in full swing.  I ended up running down to ChekaLooka for rental.  On the way back, I noticed a lot of glass in the beach.  Be careful running barefoot at this spot as it seems to be the place where under age kids go to drink beer (or I’m just getting old) and there’s evidence of broken bottles in the sand near the right-rocks put-in.  Buy some cheap flip-flops to leave on the beach while you swim or comfortable dive shoes to wear on the beach and beneath your fins.

After rushing back with a hood, we put in and began our swim out.  Conditions were promising as it was hot, sunny, and the water was very calm but with a steady current at an extra high tide.  Yet two things dampened the quality of this run:

1. The late afternoon sun was at an angle that really seemed to reduce visibility by about 75%.  Conditions that I would expect 100′ visibility were producing something more like 25′ visibility.  Also, the fish were extra jumpy at this time of day, perhaps because it’s the feeding time for larger predators.  If we floated with the current, we could see all kinds of neat stuff, but every time they saw us move, they scattered.

LESSON: Don’t go too late or too early in the day when the sun’s angle will cause most of the light to be traveling horizontally, casing everything in glare or shadow and nothing in visible relief.   The fish are jumpy a these  times anyway, so it’s best to let them be. 6:00 is probably too late to put in at Golden Gardens.

2. I know that I have been advocating for going at high tide only, but this time, the tide was maybe TOO high.  I’d been in out in 9′ high tides at this location twice and had a great time with lots of stuff visible.  Although AyeTides on my iPhone told me this was just a 10.5 foot high tide, it was about 6 feet deeper on the coast than a reported 9.5 foot tide.   The rock we call “Green Joe” was completely submerged with two feet of water over it and the seaweed forest was quite distant from the surface as we swam over it.  Mermaid beach was totally submerged and I could barely stand at the most shallow location by  the sea-wall.  During other high tides it is an exposed sandy beach.  Given that there was a solar eclipse on the other side of the planet, this must have been a spring tide.  As a result, we lost some of our navigational bearings and went much farther up the coast than we usually do.  This also made the deep water stuff more boring in the reduced afternoon visibility.   Coming back, the life in the rocks along the sea wall was much more interesting.

Lesson: There’s such a thing as too much of a good thing.  When the tide is too high, and you are farther from the action in the seaweed forests off-shore.  Take it to the rocks along the shore during high tides and low visibility.  Inversely, I must test whether this means that at LOW tide, when the rocks are terrible and the in-shore swimming is so bad, if the views out 200 feet are significantly better.   It’s possible that the axiom I have been following of “never at low tide” is wrong and that I should be saying: Long beach? Extend your reach.  Distant locations such as Mermaid Forest might look best at low side when surface plunges your closer to the action – or maybe it will be a murky algae bloom.

Only one way to find out.

Ballard as you have never seen it before.

7-17-09 5:00 pm

Sunny 82 degree

High Tide

Some Chop

53 degree water

100 foot vis

Holy cow. I didn’t know Seattle Snorkeling could get this good.

What a great way to test the new wet suit!

Walk the scenic path to the North-most beach access or plod along the sandy way to this northern most part of Golden Gardens Beach and put in for the Northward “right rocks” run.

We put in at the far North-East side of the beach and made our way out about 50 feet and saw an amazing life-scape in the seaweed beds.  Here’s where the crabs have been hiding.   We lingered here watching the sole, sanddabs and other flat fish as well as hermit crabs and dungeness.  We had 30 foot visibility at this point as we played in 20 foot water.

We headed North along the rocks but about 40 feet out from shore, our eyes on the shifting bed of loose seaweed below.

Striped Sea Perch near "Green Joe"

Swimming over this sea-lettuce will shorten your trip unless you are immune to all forms of motion sickness.  This stuff has a way of moving in the water that makes the rocks appear to swoosh back and forth in a rhythmic tide when it’s really you and the sea-lettuce moving.  Once you realize this, you don’t have long before you start feeling woozy.  My buddy and I had to beach ourselves on a piled of long concrete slabs like mermaids in the pounding surf until out stomachs stopped lurching.  I nick-named the place “mermaid beach”.

Seen here, the "Green Joe" feature is named for its sea-sick discoverer.

After recovering, we went on to an interesting rock feature that drew our eye.   As we rounded the headland, the character of the water and the life changed DRAMATICALLY.  Visibility opened up to about 100 feet.  The characteristic green of the sound turned Hawaii blue on us and suddenly there was life everywhere.  A school of juvenile Steelhead kept checking me out.   Then there was a dense school of what looked like Pacific Sardines.  Then we rounded the rock and were stunned to see a school of about 50 large Surf Perch hiding in the shade of the rock.   It was amazing.

When my buddy and I were looking at the photos over pints at Kings Hardware, I asked the waitress where she thought the pictures were taken:

“Well it’s Hawaii isn’t it?”

I proudly corrected her, “Nope.  That’s Ballard – two hours ago.”

I’m not sure she believed me.

UPDATE:  SWIM 6, Golden Gardens Right Rocks 2

7-18-09 5:00 pm

Sunny 85 degree

Ebbing High Tide

Choppy

53 degree water

100 foot vis

I went back the next day and made an important discovery.

I didn’t bring my friend with the camera this time, so no photos and trust me when I say that’s a shame.

But at least I FINALLY convinced my wife to come with me.  She got outfitted at Cheka Looka with a 4/3 wetsuit and some new fins and a snorkel from DiscountDivers.com (their physical store is over on Westlake). We walked up to the beach and faced a fairly brisk in-shore wind that whipping up the surf into something even choppier than what had made me sick yesterday.  I resolved to power through it.

When we got in, the visibility was passable @ 20 feet, but not as good as yesterday.  The surf was just churning things up too much and we were swimming in sea-salad.  Still, we decided to press on and see if things got better to the North.  We learned in swim #3 to never accept poor conditions but to check farther along the shore.  I told her about the shifty sea-lettuce and its affects, but she wanted to go and see it for herself while I followed the nice and stable sand and rocks down to “Green Joe”.    So I muddled along, seeing the occasional Sole skittering away beneath me and feeling a little down that the visibility wasn’t as good as the day before, but I hoped there would still be a show around the corner like the day before.

When I looked up to check on her, she was pretty far out.  Maybe 100 feet from shore.  That made me nervous since I have read a lot about the currents up here and don’t know too much about the boat traffic either.  I REALLY wished I had brought a “diver down” flag with me to float near by, and will do so on my next trip.  I put my face down and swam farther along the coast, past mermaid beach, and wondered why she wasn’t seasick yet from the dancing weeds.   They were a lot worse today as the surf was really churning.  I looked up and she was…gone.

I spun all around, anxiety creeping up as I couldn’t make out any sign of her at all until – ah, there she was, 250 feet out from shore.   What could she be DOING out there?  It had to be WAY too deep to see a thing in this mess, so I wondered if she was in trouble maybe.  Well, I would have to go out and get her to show her the real places to swim – or at least to check on her.

I took a deep breath and put my fins together for some full body swimming and was out to her in 30 seconds or so.  But as I got near, I knew why she was out that far, and it nothing to do with distress.  She had discovered something amazing…a Forrest that was every bit as filled with life as out best trip in Hawaii in water with 100 foot visibility.  Long spindly legged crabs that would span two feet if stretched out made their way among ling cod.  Huge purple and sun-burst stars defied normal scale and that school of Striped Sea perch from Yesterday…was just the small handful from the REAL school that lived out here.

Large eels, Rock Fish, Ling Cod, big Crab…And the plants here, they are just beautiful.  If I get a camera, I’ll post images of this place right away.

We have nick-named the forrest “Mermaid Forrest” since it’s right by “Mermaid Beach”.

Impression: Quite simply, it blew the doors off of every other trip so far.  Golden Gardens Right Rocks is the best run I’ve found.

Lesson: Try more sights that are farther off shore.  The water is more clear and the variety more amazing than the surf-hugging that I’ve been doing.

Safety Note: I will need to bring a “Dive Flag” with me on any trip where I’m venturing into waters where there may be boats.

7-3-09

Weather: Sunny

Temp: 85 Degrees

Water Temperature: 53 Degrees

Water Surface: Calm

Water Vis: 40 feet.

Current: Fast

Wetsuit: 4/3 Rental

A blue-green paradise for shy fish and crab.

This was our third time at Golden Gardens and our best trip yet.  It’s right here in Ballard and outfitting at Cheka Looka is so easy and inexpensive, that this seems like a natural place for me to test out theories on the art of Snorkeling Seattle.  I’m always glad to stop in there because they seem so interested in the project that it feels almost like a duty to check in and report my progress to them.

What is it??

Seriously...It's cool but...

Neat Thingy

Today we were testing the notion that conditions along the rocks improve greatly at high tide.  So we put out at Golden Gardens again at the climax of high tide to see if it makes a big difference. Indeed it did.  Within minutes of getting in the water we were sighting all kinds of amazing varieties we had not seen in our earlier runs.

Just 50 feet out from the put-in where the beach meets the left-rocks, we ran into a school of what I think were smelt in a bait-ball dense school unlike anything I’d ever seen.

Going along the rocks, it just got better.  Strange creatures that I can’t name roamed a scenic blue-green wonderland that fluttered within inches of my face.  Again we saw Pen-point Gunnels in the rocks, much more fish, and many fewer crab.  Those crabs that were to be found were confined to the sandy bits, way out from shore and a little too close to the boat traffic for my comfort.  None of the big ones were out, but we soon found out why.

As we neared the pier I came upon a disturbing image.  There was something large and white at the bottom, a shark perhaps?   Then as I got closer I saw it was a dead dog-fish that had been cut up and discarded there.  As I looked up onto the pier, the many lines of crab-pots told the story.   These fish remains served to lure the crabs out to where nearby fishers could catch them in their traps.

Safety Note: Swimming near shore and piers is dangerous enough but without a dive knife it’s suicide.  Be sure to get a good quality dive knife that has a notch in it for cutting line before you go out.  You might consider taking two.

May 2009:

It took a long time to get things ready for my second attempt.  First there was the matter of a wetsuit.  One of my dear friends gave me a 7 mil hooded dive suit that was sure to do the job of protecting me from the cold enough that I could spend some quality time with whatever is in the sound, but on the chosen day to go out and try it I discovered that I couldn’t even fit a single leg into it.  After much struggle I was really worried that this was all going to be too much trouble and that the inconvenience of spending an hour getting into a wetsuit would make this whole venture unfeasible.    I gave the wetsuit to a more svelte friend who slipped right into the suit with ease and decided that I would have to look elsewhere to get suited.

Early June:

I discovered a local surf-shop right by Golden Gardens who rents wetsuits.  These are considerably thinner than the 7 mil hooded dive suit that my bud gave me, so I didn’t know if they would do.  These are for surfers who don’t spend as much time in the water moving through it full-body as I planned to, and the guys at the shop were not sure themselves what I would need.  They really seemed to like the idea of a Seattle Snorkele Guide and  really went out of their way to not mock me too much when I put on the first suit they gave me backwards.  (Note to readers:  Zipper in the back.)  The shop is called “Cheka Looka” http://www.chekalooka.com/ and rents 4/3 wetsuits for 15$ a day.  Come early or during a slow week and you can easily get boots, gloves, and hoods to go with.

Westuit lesson: Most suits will zip in the BACK.  The long ribbon on the zipper is for you to grab and pull up.

Many wetsuits have a thicker material at the core than on the limbs.  The wetsuit will be called 4/3 if it is 4 mil at the core and 3 mil on the limbs.  You always say the bigger number first.  This is the minimum suit thickness I would recomend for the Puget Sound.   If you are me, it will do in the summer.  If you are just about anyone else, it’s only good for an hour in the water before you start turning blue.

Safety note: Leave the water if you start shivering.  Shivering is the first sign of hypthermia.  The next sign is drowning.

I am short fat.  Most rentals were hard to get on and didn’t fit too well, but they got the job done.  I used it to my advantage and used the long arms to cover my hands.

My first wet-suit on, me and a friend hopped into the car and drove a few remaining blocks to Golden Gardens for our first REAL Seattle Snorkel trip.

The Actual Swim:

Weather: Sunny

Air Temperature: 75 degrees

Surface: Calm

Water Temperature: 50 degrees

Water Visibility: 30 feet

Tide: High, ebbing

I rode out in my wetsuit, sweating the car and down the beach while my partner waited to change in the bathroom at Golden Gardens.  Of the two of us, I think mine was the wiser choice – though I am just as likely to do a fast and dirty pickle surprise change out near my car these days – the bathrooms were fairly covered in urine and we joked on our way down the beach that he already got his wetsuit salty.   Yeah, I know…

We put in at the middle of the beach and were rewarded with our first lesson:  Fogging is a HUGE problem in this water.  With the colder water, your mask is very prone to fogging, so bring a good commercial anti-fogging agent or make your own from 50% no-more-tears baby shampoo and 50% water.  If you don’t have baby shampoo, you can use regular detergent and water mixed at a lower ratio (1/5 dish soap, 4/5 water) and just try to avoid getting it in your eyes.

Of course we didn’t have any of that, so we applied liberal amounts of nature’s defogger and spit a lot into our masks, giving it a VERY light rinse when done.  This works great for me, doesn’t work so well for some others – so do try to bring defogger when you go if you really want to see anything.

Hope you like Jelly Fish

Once mask-down we saw rolling seaweed salad and smooth worn rocks beneath us.  We set out into some eel grass that gave way to a plethora of blue-jellies and not much else.  I used what I learned in Hawaii and suggested we make for the rocks to see more life.   So we headed to our left, down the south side west side of the beach to follow the rocks toward the marina – being very cautious of nearby boat traffic.

As we got to the rocks things started heating up and we saw some truly interesting creatures.  Pen-point Gunnels snapped from the crevices where also schools of some shy Surf Perch fluttered about.   Our favorite sighting was of a large red-rock crab, maybe 9 inches across the back, crawling into a crack between the rocks.

The water itself was blurry in places and the temperature varied GREATLY as we proceeded.   It seemed we were looking at a kind of thermal distortion all around us as water with varying temperatures mixed.  Sometimes this affected visibility severely, but mostly it was a transient effect.  Still, if this was the infamously “clouded murky water” of the sound, it wasn’t so bad.

Most interesting was how thick the jelly’s got.  At one point we gave up on trying to dodge them, and just tried to make sure our faces were protected.   I got a few light dings on my fingers and didn’t really mind that much.  On our way home we joked that the Sound was not actually made of water but increasingly smaller Jellys.  We still had a good time and were looking forward to heading back.

Safety note: That was very stupid of me, some people have anaphelactic reactions to Jelly Fish stings and I didn’t know a thing about the species I was swimming with.  If you see a cloud of Jelly’s just go find a better spot to swim.

We found some submerged rocks that were brimming with all kinds of neat organisms that we didn’t know how to name or place, but we definitely had a good time.  It wasn’t Hawaii by any stretch but the results were…encouraging.

I gotta say that I got a kick out of the reactions we got from people.  Lots on the beach were stunned to see us go in an Snorkel, many were curious, and children seemed to go into fits of joy at the sight of us.  For a while kids followed our progress from the walkway along the top of the rocks we were following, jumping up and down and yelling and pointing excitedly.  I wonder if any  of them will grow up to try this themselves because of the day they saw somebody at the beach doing it?

Impressions:  If this was what I could find jumping into a random spot at a random time, what would I be able to dig up once we learned a little more?  I doubt very much that this is “as good as it gets” and this isn’t a bad if it’s “as bad as it gets”.   Maybe this is a sport for more extreme types who don’t need the sweeping views, but who like to explore.  I’m going to stick with it and so’s my buddy.

Date:  10/4/08

Temperature: ~80 Degrees

Water Temperatre: 48 Degrees

Surface: Calm.

No suit.  Just a bathing Suit, Fins, Snorkel and Mask.

Going in, I was very mindful of the gawking teens and children.  Some were pointing and laughing.  I knew that it was going to be cold, but I needed to guage just HOW cold and if a wetsuit was just needed for comfort of if hypthermia would set in right away.  How could I tell people what to wear without trying ALL the options?   Plus, I didn’t own a wetsuit or know where to get one, so this was the only way I was going to get salty.

I waded in and was met with the biting cold I had been accustomed to through my earlier involuntary explorations.  As the water passed my hips I felt a sense of doom that I could not explain.  I surpressed this childish emotion and gritted my teeth even as I fitted the mask to my head.  I plunged down quickly to get it over with and let the water wash the day’s excess heat away.  It felt good as I lay there.  So good, that I began to think that there was nothing to this “you need a wetsuit” business other than some people’s aversion to the sensation of cold water.  I feel the same way about hot weather.  I wish there was a cold suit for those days.

I began to paddle forward and was struck by a full-body ice-cream headache.  I gasped and stood up while wrenching the mask from my face.

W T F?

My reaction was visceral and instant.  My body didn’t like what had just happened at all.  I monitored myself for the signs of hypthermia.  None yet.  I had not begun shivering…my extremities were bright red, not blue…so I tried again.  It was like swimming through knives, but this time I was prepared.  I had a hard time breathing, and had to force each breath to come in and out as I paddled out.  My legs began moving more and more slowly when a pain radiated from my neck to my head that was again, quite like that intense pain one gets when eating ice cream to fast, but only most of my upper body was experiencing it.

I stood up and the pain still did not pass.  My body, against my firm instructions to wait for signs of hypthermia, began pacing for the shore.  Soon I was standing in the sun and felt every bit like a shining ice-cycle through which the light just passed without imparting an ounce of warmth or energy.  I never got to shivering, but I didn’t have to.  Swimming in the sound without a wet suit was suicide.

As I dragged my gear slowly to the fresh-water shower to rinse it off before stowing it away, I was yet again aware of staring and laughing youths.  It felt like a march of shame and I was confused by that.  I didn’t think it was all that funny.  Then when I got to the showers, I realized why everyone had been pointing and laughing.  That sinking dread as my hips submerged was explained: The conspicuous outline of my expensive smart phone was clearly visible in the pocket of my swim trunks.  The sound had gotten it’s second cell phone from me!

The price of wisdom is paid in cell phones.

I went home and started making calls to see what I could fenagle for a wetsuit.  Winter approached, but I would be back – rain or shine.