Location: Secret location, Admiralty Island, southeast Alaska
I can’t disclose the location of our second dive of the day. It’s too dangerous for our friends – thousands of Alaska king crabs. Happy to report that we did our first scuba splash this morning on the wreck of the large steamship State of California in Gambier Bay, Admiralty Island. It was an excellent dive by the way with stunningly good visibility albeit cold water even by Alaskan standards. No other diveboat has ever operated in Alaska and we have had to build up our repertoire of dive sites over the years by exploring and checking out loads of new sites. Which has been great fun and given us a lot
of pleasure. Many of the sites that we have discovered have turned out to be absolutely world-class with some of them vying for the title of “best dive site in North America”. Yup, they are that good and today was no exception. The shallow bottom was covered with leafy kelp and at first glance it didn’t look like much UNTIL the scuba divers started lifting the kelp aside. To everyone’s astonishment, there were piles of Alaska king crab under the kelp – literally hundreds of crabs all piled on top of each other. And then as the divers looked around, they realized that these “crab piles” were everywhere with the total number of animals easily numbering in the thousands. Plus loads of other types of crabs and other cool critters, giant pacific octopus and the biggest sea cucumbers (well over 2 feet) that anybody had ever seen. Everybody came up absolutely raving about the diving!! I just hope those guys from that Discovery Channel TV show about the world’s deadliest catch don’t find out about this gem of a dive site!!! Captain Mike
Surface Conditions: Clear, sunny, calm seas, calm winds. Air temperarture low 70’s.
Underwater Conditions: Water temperature 42 degrees State of California wreck, 47 degrees at the crab site. Visibility variable from 20 – 100 feet.
Thousands and thousands of Alaska king crabs
