Nordic Joe's Seattle Snorkel Guide

Weather: 44 F, Mostly Cloudy, no rain

Water:  High tide, ebbing, Low 40s, 50′ vis.

Date / Time: 11:00am – 2:00pm – December 20th

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

Braced for the cold this time, I brought my wife’s gloves and swim socks to afford me some protection against the cooler winter surface water.  I also made sure to wear the longest undies I could find, and added my snorkel bob rash-guard for good measure.   Not the most bundled up guy in the sea, but for me it proved to be enough that I enjoyed a 2 hour swim with only minor discomfort (easily outweighed by the joy of swimming in the sound).

I was determined to revisit Mermaid Forest at Golden Gardens in the winter so that I could observe what seasonal changes might occur there.   For the newer readers, I’ll explain that Mermaid Forest is a line of Sargassum Muticum that edges  coast on the north side of golden gardens.  When we discovered it this summer, it was the best location to be found for snorkeling in Seattle, bar none.   The diversity of marine life there was simply astounding and it was all within a foot or two of a waiting camera.  Huge schools of sea perch, giant emperor stars, fat sun-stars, all kinds of crab, ling cod, rock fish, perch, eels (actually eel-like fish) – you name it. It was entirely like visiting a tropical reef where all the fish just had better fashion sense.

These Anemones cling to rock features and convert piles of rubble into living reefs.

The only issue that swim ever had was that on the hottest days, the dark sargassum would absorb the sunlight and actually heat the surrounding water to around 65 degrees, and this could cloud it up a bit as the plankton and algae bloomed in the warm and nutrient rich waters around the forest.  I had heard that in the winter, this effect is eliminated, so I was VERY eager to introduce this fantastic spot to another swimmer.

We struck out from the shore, pleased to see the vicious current we encountered last time was completely gone, and made our way through VERY clear and beautiful waters.   There seemed to be an uptick in star-fish and moon snails along the bottom, but there was little else to see.  As we paddled out, checked our progress against the shore and my own instructions for finding the forest again:

1.  Put in at the rightmost rocks at golden gardens.  Swim out directly toward the sea until you are getting nervous that you might be too far out (around 700 feet).  You should still be able to see the bottom.   If you can’t, you are too far out.

2. From there, proceed parallel to the shore and you will find the forest when you are parallel to the feature that we named “mermaid beach” – where long slabs of concrete from a jumble on the shore.  The forest stretches from this point, all the way past the feature called “green joe”.

Yet here I was, moving along the coast, almost to Green Joe, and there was nothing but water, sand, star fish, and a few dark spots on the sea floor below.

Had somebody removed the forest?  S Muticum is an invasive foreign species from Japan that competes with the local eel grass and kelp.   There had been talk of eradication…but last thing I had read suggested this was truly impossible.  Had some environmental disaster fallen upon the area?

My swim buddy proposed that the forest dies in the winter.  I doubted that as I’d read just how tough this stuff was to get rid of.

After an hour or so, we gave up on the clearly absent forest and headed in toward Green Joe.  The system of rocks around it functioned like a reef and there was always a bounty of life to bee seen there.  Yet as we neared, I spotted nothing but larger and larger star fish – apparent refugees from the missing seaweed forest.  Some crabs that I had only seen clinging to seaweed before were on some of the rocks.  What was most notably missing was the huge school of sea perch that used to shelter in the lee of the big rock itself as if on-break from the goings on in the relatively urban environment of the nearby seaweed forest.  I circled the area – looking for any sign of larger life – but the place was just abandoned.

We made our way back along the shore-break rocks and looked for gunnels in the rocks.  We spotted a few bold crabs, some penfish, a small school of perch that mocked the once grand display the area offered.   This place in winter was the same as on land – an animal can still be seen here and there, but it is primarily in hibernation.   This is an observation confirmed after some research when I got home.   I looked up more information on S Muticum and discovered this:

S. Muticum’s  Lateral branches detach in the summer or autumn, leaving a short perennialbasal stem to overwinter.

- Nobanis Invasive Alient Species Fact Sheet

So the forest will return in the spring -and it remains for now as a forest of deciduous trees in the winter – spare and barren.

Lesson:  Winter swims will require more stable ecosystems such as rock-reefs, ship-wrecks, or perhaps kelp forests.

This refugee from the missing forest is making due on a near-by rock.

I spotted a kelp forest right by the Seattle Aquarium – I might ask them for permission to explore the vicinity of their building!  Otherwise, I may have to suck up my pride and try a swim at Discovery Park.  It’s one of the few public beaches I haven’t ventured into yet.  There’s a reason, and I’ll share it in my first post on Discovery Park, coming soon this winter.

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.