So that was Easter and in this little corner of the world, this is a big deal. True, it's not as big as Christmas were gazillion of dollars are being spent on gifts and food all over the country, but still, Easter rhymes with chocolate candies and egg baskets.

Usually I attend the Laguna Sea Dweller's Easter Egg Hunt. However, over the years, this fun event has become a mercantile endeavor more focused on the value of the prizes you can land if you find one of those damn eggs rather than on the  fun of the whole experience. This year, since I did not need a go-pro or anything else (a $3,200 value!), I decided to join with my buddies of South Orange County Divers (yes dive-club polygamy is permitted in California, we are a progressive state) and San Diego Divers for their own yearly Underwater Easter Egg Hunt at La Jolla Shores, an hour away from our own Laguna Beach.

That was cool.

First, the next time someone complains about parking in Laguna, I'll remind them on how fun it is to park 2 miles away from where you drop your gear... Gee, that was quite a turnout! With publicity in the local newspaper and a good PR campaign, the event drained more than 70 registered divers. Since they also had a non-underwater egg hunt for kids, these showed up en masse, adding probably 50-70 people to the mix. Add to that the usual surfers, beach-goers, and another dive group (Power Scuba) and you're probably looking at around 300 cars trying to park in the 50-spot parking lot. No need to say that street parking was a nightmare too... Of course I could have arrived at 7:45am with the rest of the crowd, but I had decided to stay in close-by Torrey Pines for the night, to NOT have to be there that early... Oh well.

The event started on time. I did not. I was still struggling with my dry-suit when the first divers hit the water. Or rather were hit by the water, since a nice 5ft surf was up... And in SD, one of the capital cities of surfing, waves come in packs (science says sets, but I don't care, those were nasty packs of nasty waves). I had not entered surf like this for quite a while, the more I age the more I value my life, so I usually watch and laugh (I'm mean) at people attempting to jump a 6 footer. But here I was, struggling to get my reflexes back on how to deal with these and wondering why I was not in the Bahamas.

Anyway, after several attempts I managed to get past the surf zone but I had lost my buddies. So I dove solo. In a place I had never dove before. In viz that was measured in inches.

That was cool.

I did not find any eggs though. And I lost my spare mask when I took my compass out of my leg pocket when I finally realized that I was not diving Shaw's Cove and was lost beyond all hope of recovery. The nice thing with La Jolla Shores is that it's a perfect North-South beach, so all I had to do to get back was head East. But not before I checked out the famed "canyons" that were supposed to mark the end of the egg laying area. There the viz increased slightly to something like 10-15ft. Did not see much in the canyon but I saw the biggest badass sheephead crab I have ever seen swinging by me on my way back.

Thinking of it, I don't know why I'm telling you all that because I decided to dive camera-free after I checked the surf before the dive. That was  the first time in a looooong time. But a wise decision nonetheless.

So back on the shore safely, I was surprised to see that I was not the only ridiculous diver to come back with zero/nada egg. A few other divers also reported shamefully that they were incapable of a task a 3 year old has no trouble with... Oh Well.

A group of SOCDC divers won first place with 22 eggs, now that was a major accomplishment. They came back with a few chocolate eggs and a $5 coupon to a local burger joint (a $5 value!)

After a refill on pancakes, I was ready for a second dive. We decided to go to the canyons. This time I took my camera (so, see, it was worth the wait). And I did not go alone as 12 other fearless SOCDC members went as well.

Well during our surface interval, the viz decided to drop dramatically and we hit THICK GREEN PEA SOUP when we went down. It cleared a little at around 60ft in the canyons, but with no light to penetrate the layer above, the scenery looked eerie green.

I saw a couple of nifty things though. Since I had never dove there before, everything looked new and unusual. I found weird looking fishes in holes that my buddy is convinced were mutated eels from the not-so-nearby San Onofre nuclear plant or the runoff of the very-close-by genetic engineering labs of the area. I saw a lot of Dungeness looking crabs, most of them of eatable size! I found also a few oversized gastropods that looked like nudibranchs on steroid (and more to fuel the genetic conspiracy theory). The reef was also covered in brittle sea-stars (Ophiothrix spiculata - see I'm getting better at fish ID, thanks Google). Oh and the funniest thing we saw was a cormorant at 90fsw. Yes, the bird kind.

As far as taking pictures of all that, plus divers in open (green) water, I opted for the usual 1/80TV-forced flash+Auto-macro setting for close ups (radiated eels, giant nudibranchs and multiplying sea stars) and 1/50TV no flash 800ISO for divers. No need to say that the resulting pictures will not make the cover of any magazine anytime soon.

After the dives, we decided to walk around Torrey Pine since the hotel pool was invaded by screaming brats of all sorts and ended up hiking more than 8 miles in the Torrey Pine State Park. I had my T2i and its 17-70mm Sigma lens and shot a couple of nice HDR sceneries. Enjoy (or not)!