These photos are from Sept. 19, 2021. Visibility was about 15' for most of the dive except out along the outfall pipe, where it dropped to 10' or so.
There is now a small patch of bull kelp (visible from shore) growing on the shallow end of the boulder pile leading out to the pipe.
Out along the boulder pile, things looked mostly the same as a few months ago except there seemed to be more of an algae coating on the rocks, even in the deeper areas. There were still lots of juvenile canary rockfish. Small lingcod, kelp greenlings and black, yellowtail, brown, copper, quillback and Puget Sound rockfish have also colonized the boulder pile. Mottled stars were the most common large invertebrate.
I reached the exposed outfall pipe and swam out as far as the first "crab bridge".
When the new sewage treatment plant was being built, the rock blasted out of the excavation was dumped off the point to form an artificial reef. After seeing the boulder pile leading out to the outfall pipe, I assumed that it was the artificial reef. Today, I found another, smaller boulder pile off to the side of the outfall pipe boulder pile. Since it didn't seem to have been dumped there for any practical purpose like covering a pipe, I now assume that this smaller boulder pile is the artificial reef. There was a small bull kelp forest growing on it.
I swam back to shore in the shallows, which was full of feather boa kelp.
