So I had decided that I was going to join the dark side and become an exclusive warm water diver.

That was before one of my dive buddies and good friend discovered a frogfish in Shaw's Cove, my favorite dive site off the coast of Laguna Beach, California, right in my own backyard!

A few minutes after my buddy surfaced, the news went viral on Facebook and OCDiving.com, our local mailing list. Soon enough, an army of divers and photographers went down to see the famous fish, sharing its secret location from dive to dive and posting their pictures on social media.

It's not like I have never seen a frogfish before. I spotted one posing as a rock (that's what they usually do best) while diving for sharks in Fakarava, one of the best place to dive in French Polynesia (that's the archipelago where Tahiti is). I also saw its close cousin the leaf fish in Fiji and a very lovely yellow froggy while diving the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.

Frogfish are not completely uncommon to our waters but they are fairly rare. Based on the tremendous amount of publicity that this discovery got, it's rather safe to say that most Southern California divers had never encountered such a fish while diving off our coast. Based on the multiple photos of the elusive fish posted on social networks, it seems it belongs to the Antennarius avalonis (Roughjaw frogfish) species. Funny enough the species was formally described by Jordan & Starks in 1907 based on a dead specimen (holotype) collected in Avalon on Catalina Island by Jordan & Holder in May 1906. Hence the name Avalonis for Avalon. However, the holotype came from a local aquarium where several fish had died and based on the fact that this fish species does not show up in numbers off Catalina or anywhere North of the tip of the Baja Peninsula, it is believed that the holotype may have come from somewhere else and put in the aquarium where it met its end and its fame began (Source: Frogfishes of the world: systematics, zoogeography, and behavioral ecology by Theodore W. Pietsch & David B. Grobecker, 1987.)

Anyway, it was the week between Christmas and New Year, I was off from work and hadn't dove for almost 6 months, so I figured out, what the hell, I might as well go down there and check that froggy myself before some crazy photographer with a giant arachnid strobe setup and a tripod scares the heck out of the little guy. So I went, with the original finder and another friend, 4 days after the first sighting, the guy was still there, a few inches away from where it was originally spotted. Hidden in a crevice, befriended by a treefish, it was still there!

No need to say, I was at my advantage with my very compact camera system there! The lighting however was fairly poor inside that crevice so I used my small dive light to illuminate the subject long enough for the autofocus to focus correctly. I was shooting Tv 1/100 forced flash at 250 ISO. The result is not too bad, for basically shooting blind. There are way better shots published on FB and other blogs but the animal was out in the open, at the rim of the crevice making the shot way more spectacular. Anyway, I got mine and did not try to disturb the little guy despite the less-than-optimal shooting location.

Later in the dive, however, on our way back, I saw a guy with a giant SLR rig with two 3ft strobe arms trying to cram into the 1ft crevice to get the shot. I wondered if froggy survived... I was relieved to verify that it did on our second dive when I paid him a last visit.

The rest of the dive was quite enjoyable. After miserable conditions in 2009, I was rather discouraged to dive in 2010 despite reading amazing reports with 30 ft  viz in Shaw's... This time, it was green but fair, with 10-15ft viz off the wall and 20-30ft inside the reef system. The crevice and the archway were very nice with a light surge and no whiteout until we reached Crescent. Temperature was in the 55's but I don't care because for my "first" cold dives of the year, I dusted off my drysuit and ski clothes as undergarment! We had almost everything Shaw's can offer (except the baby whale that was reported two weeks earlier - no kidding) including a large horn shark, octopus, a big badass green moray posing with its army of shrimps and urchins. A lot of urchins. I wonder if the kelp patches will survive...

So what's the diagnostic? Am I still a cold water diver? Probably. I guess I'll have to VIP and hydro my tank after all!

And more shots from our two dives at Shaw's...