Alki - Pipeline(s)
October 6th, 2005
Pipeline Mini:
A few of us did a dive off of Alki last night, we were looking for the same pipeline I did a couple of months ago (see below), but instead we ended up on a smaller line that goes out from shore tangentially. It was an average-ish sort of dive on the way out, with a huge current at the end of the pipe, followed by some jewels in the rough on the way back in. We saw some skates, lots of crab, some shrimp and what I can only guess is called a mousefish. I’ve added new photos to the gallery. After the fact, my buddy Jeff showed me this aerial photo describing where we went wrong.
The real pipeline is the pile of rocks on the right heading out to sea, and we were bumbling along the smaller one to the left heading out at about a 45 degree angle from shore.
Anyways, dive profile was: 30′ max depth (WOW!), 54F temp, 1:13 dive time, 2100psi consumed. Even though I was not impressed with the dive in the beginning, on the way back I found some pretty interesting things, and a few I’d never seen before.
Below is my previous account of diving the pipeline at Alki:
After a grueling surface swim, we reached the mouth of the pipleline at Alki. It happened to be low tide and the current was dragging us back to shore, it took about 15 minutes to make it out. It was a nice shallow dive at 30′ max depth, with a BT of 1:04. The cool waters of the PNW even felt good after the exertion of trying to fight the current out to the dive site. We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but ran into many great examples of common Puget Sound fauna. This was my second dive using the Zeagle Stiletto BCD. The jury is still out on this one but I’m starting to like it more.
The visibility was a measly 10 feet or so, typical of the murky summer months in the Pacific Northwest. Water temperature was in the mid to upper 50’s. Though the nutrient rich currents in Puget Sound lend to some amazingly hardy examples of sea life, I’m still a tropical diver at heart.
Entry Filed under: Puget Sound, SCUBA