A silty 10-15 feet, 5 feet in the shallows (outgoing tide)
really fun dive with solid vis once we got to the line. Saw a few octos, a surprisingly sizable grunt scuplin, a massive amount of striped nudibranches, and a really nice diamond back nudibranch.
I was pleasantly surprised by the visibility at depth. Tons of snow in the water column, but I could still see quite far. Lots of jellies in the water column, mostly water and moon jellies but a few egg yolks as well, and tons of ctenophores too.
Saw: a pair of giant white dorids, one pink tritonia, one Palio dubia, a horned shrimp, four or five red octos, two large great sculpins, a few sea spiders, one sailfin. Plus the usual cast of rockfish, flatfish, and crabs.
Seemed like a lot of boats out there today...
Lots of striped nudies there today too! I've never seen so many! We also saw tall top jellies, and an egg yolk jelly. Cool to hear about the pink tritona!
Alki Junkyard is a great dive site to find teeny tiny critters like neon sea fleas, sea spiders, opossum shrimp, baby stubby squids, etc. It has a sea pen field with their predators, and an expansive eel grass bed. The site is often a good choice on windy days as it's protected from wind from the south. The current can push here so dive at slack or during a mild ebb.
A bioluminescent sea pen at Alki Junkyard in West Seattle. Sea pens are fascinating colonial octocorals — groups of tiny, independent polyps working together as a single organism. To escape predatory sea slugs, they can retract into the sandy bottom or uproot to float away on the ocean current. Photo by Eric Askilsrud.
Eric Askilsrud and Scuba Jess (from Bellevue) observing a moon jelly at Seattle's Alki Junkyard. Photo by Eric Askilsrud.
This was one of the strangest octopus encounters we've had. He was making yoga poses. At Alki Junkyard, West Seattle. Photo by Eric Askilsrud.
Whitespotted greenling eggs. We could tell they were getting close to hatching, so we went and visited the nest several times. We finally got to see one hatch. It shot up towards the surface quite rapidly, presumably to escape predators. At Alki Junkyard, West Seattle. Photo by Eric Askilsrud.
A neon sea flea at Seattle's Alki Junkyard shore dive. This species comes in a variety of colors. Some mimic nudibranch coloration. Photo by Eric Askilsrud.
Opossum shrimp at Alki Junkyard, West Seattle. Photo by Eric Askilsrud. These guys are super tiny and jumpy!
Market squid mating at Seattle's Alki Junkyard, West Seattle. This was an amazing event to see! And amazingly, if you look really closely, you can see a dogfish shark photobombing the background of the photo! We don't see those too often. Photo by Eric Askilsrud.
For more dive site scenery—parking, shore entry, and the area around the site—visit our , where we even project a dive flag into the scene at the point of entry!
