A few weeks before heading to the cruise, a friend mentioned that there are kelp forests off the coast of Catalina Island that you can snorkel around. I was immediately intrigued, until I found out that I had to wear a wetsuit because the water is normally pretty chilly.
I did sign up for the Virgin Voyages excursion, the two-hour snorkeling in the kelp forest, and I'm so glad I did it. It gave me a secured spot off the ship since Catalina Island is a tender port, and I was ready and waiting to go at 9:30 in the morning.
For a moment, I was thinking that maybe I was going to cancel, because we were coming from the north and it was cold the night before on deck. So I was a little worried that I'd be freezing, and it just didn't sound appealing. But I am so glad I did it. You have to wear a wetsuit because it's the Pacific and it is cold, but the water was actually pretty warm.
I had my new dive kit for my Insta360 X6 that I was excited to use, even though I forgot my dive tripod, so some of the video looks a little strange. Thankfully, the dive center had a floaty handle in their lost and found that I could attach to my camera.
We then met our guide, who was lovely and has lived on the island for five years, and we walked along to Lover's Cove, where we entered the water. It was crystal clear, the kelp swaying in the waves, thousands upon thousands of fish. The highlight, of course, is the Garibaldi fish, which are orange, and thankfully contrasted with the water and the other fish, which were pretty much all gray.
We did see a couple of sea turtles and a baby ray, which was pretty cool. At one point, we found an abalone shell, and the guide dove down and got it, so we got to take a close look at an abalone shell, which are just beautiful.
There are some tour groups that come around, two of which are in sort of a half-submerged submarine where people can go in and see the water without getting wet. One of those came by, and apparently they have little buttons they can push that spit out food, so the fish all come around the bottom of the half-submarine. We waited till the submarine was gone and got to swim through even more fish than were there before the feeding ship came by. It was really cool and such a great experience.
Thanks to Ursula for alerting me to this amazing experience. Brad opted to not join me for this one, he isn't much of a snorkeler and enjoyed sleeping in!
