Diving at the Marine Room (La Jolla Shores)

Well we planned out a great dive today... we were up at 5AM and on site by 7AM... we had rented our rigs the day before, done our homework about a week earlier... trying to squeeze in at least one more dive before I deploy again. Weather Channel.com said that it was going to be sunny all day, 0% humidity, good temps... we got there and surveyed our spot... here are the write-ups of what we expected to see at "The Marine Room":

"... it's likely you'll catch glimpses of Leopard Sharks, which come by the hundreds to mate in the shallow waters. Leopard Sharks are harmless and are beautiful to watch. At the Marine Room are scattered rocks, surrounded by sand. There are other large bottom-feeding marine animals in this area too. Bat Rays, Angel Sharks, Round Stingrays, and Banded Guitarfish are also a common site..."

Well, the surf looked pretty rough in close to the shore... pretty good sized waves and coming really fast... our backup dive spot would have been very calm but it is in Mission Bay and the bacteria levels vary a lot there and we have heard that the visibility there is pretty crappy... we'd already rented our gear so we weren't going to turn back now... we decided to give this spot a try... *** BIG MISTAKE ***

The water was REALLY WARM (57deg), but just getting out to the buoy where we were going to drop down turned out to be EXHAUSTING... it was 1/2 a mile off the shore... a 1/2 mile swim is a pretty good distance in itself but going against such heavy waves made it feel like AT LEAST a mile!!! Once we got there we had to hold on to the buoy and rest for at least 10 minutes... the waves were so bad that Brandon actually started to feel a little sea-sick!!! Once we descended we both got a little more worried... visibility was about 4 feet MAXIMUM! We got to the bottom, took a few pics of each other and practiced an "out of air" emergency response... at that point we both decided that the water was so rough we should just abandon our dive plan and head inshore... so we proceeded to return underwater to avoid fighting the bigger waves on the surface. We were down a total of 36 minutes and reached a maximum depth of only about 30 feet... we had originally planned to dive to at least 40 feet and stay down for about an hour... we really didn't see anything but a few plants... Brandon *DID* see a big lobster, Heather swears it was just a plant... that is HOW BAD the visibility down there was... downright SCARY! As we got closer in-shore the waves got so bad that the dirt on the bottom was no longer visible as it was being stirred around into clouds... this caused Brandon to get pretty seasick... since we only went down to 30 feet and had come up very slowly to about a depth of 10 feet at this point, we decided to come straight up to the surface so he could get his head re-oriented. We kicked our way back in to shore from the surface... we really weren't far from our mark of where we wanted to surface at, maybe only about 20 feet or so... unfortunately in that small amount of distance that we were off, we found ourselves in the beach rocks!!! Talk about *TOUGH* to deal with! The waves were beating down on us and pushing us in-shore, the rocks were stumbling us so we couldn't get on our feet, our fin-tips were tripping us on the rocks at the same time... it was HORRIBLE! At one point we decided to just CRAWL those 20 feet on our hands a knees! :) The life-guards came over to watch us to make sure we'd make it ok, which we did... we were POOPED! It was so bad we decided to just call it a day... we had originally planned 2 dives with about an hour break in between. We are taking our cameras in to get developed... no good pics from this dive though, to be sure. Almost a waste of our time and money but we learned two valuable lessons: 1) don't look so much at the breaking waves to gauge the water conditions, look out at the buoys in the distance... water will always be breaking somewhat in-shore, but if the water is so rough that there are swells that hide the buoys in the distance, it's probably a VERY BAD dive day (we had a very hard time keeping sight of the buoys until we were right up on them); 2) No matter HOW MUCH money you paid to rent your rig, no matter how much you want to dive your spot... if it doesn't add up, don't waste your time and just make yourself sick... it won't matter 'cuz your dive will blow... just go to your second spot and hope it is at least calm enough that you can enjoy your time down there, even if the spot isn't as cool at least you won't get SICK! :)