Diving in southern California and reading the local diving publications has long put diving the Eureka oil rig on my radar. It’s not too often a dive site offers a man-made reef sitting in over 600 feet of salt water. Being surrounded by open ocean, you also have a chance to see pelagic species. Diving the oil rigs may conjure up video of the military doing parachute jumps with everyone geared-up in a line, jumping in one after the other. This is called a “live boat”, meaning the boat is never moored and is under power at all times; divers line up and jump in all at the same time.
We awoke on the day of the trip to beautiful clear skies and flat seas as we motored out on the Sundiver Express. It only took us 20 minutes to reach the Eureka rig. I was surprised by just how big the rig was when we got close; it rose to around 10 stories tall. We were briefed on the diving procedure and told to gear up and get in line. Once ready, the boat backed right up to the rig pilings and two by two all of us did a giant stride in.
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| Photo courtesy of Lesley Alstrand |
As I descended, I was instantly struck by the explosion of life. Every single inch of the pilings were covered with strawberry anemones, white anemones, brittle stars, sea stars, scallops, muscles, nudibranchs, and urchins. As we continued down to 130 feet, we were also mesmerized by some of the pelagic jellies and salps that we passed by, many of which just defy logic of how they look and move. The life on the piling at 130 feet was just as dense as the life near the surface no matter which direction you looked. It could keep you occupied for hours instead of the mere minutes that we had. As we worked our way back toward the surface I couldn’t believe it when I saw in the corner of intersecting beams a group of lobsters inching out to see what I was. Thinking of the journey that these lobsters made to end up this high on the pilings and crossbeams, with the sea floor more than 500 feet below, was amazing to me.
Around this time I started looking and moving out into the blue that surrounded us, hoping to see something special. After only a few minutes of slowly ascending and moving back and forth along the pilings, I saw something coming toward the piling. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Once it got closer I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was finally getting to dive with a mola mola! The mola mola came very close, checking us out with one of its big eyes as it passed very calmly. At this point everyone in the water was very excited at what we just got to see. Little did any of us know this experience would be trumped in less than a minute. I had my eyes peeled, hoping to see the mola mola coming back and trying to be in the right place to film it on its return. As I looked into the blue I saw the shape of the mola mola coming towards us and then another, and another and another. No less than ten mola molas coming right up to the pilings and divers this time; not only checking us out but also playing in the bubbles from the divers. The mola molas stayed with us for the rest of the dive, calmly making close passes by us. It was very exciting to see this unique and hard to find species and get loads of time interacting with them.
The mola molas seemed to enjoy us as much as we enjoyed them.
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| Photo courtesy of Lesley Alstrand |
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