Laguna Beach Shore Crab

These shore crabs are common to the southern California area and you can see them all over if you look closely while tide pooling.  I saw this one at Shaw's Cove.  The differences between the shore crab and kelp crab are interesting..

I use the Panasonic Lumix TS4 12.1 TOUGH Waterproof Digital Camera for all of the underwater and beach shots on this blog.  It is a decent camera, you can see the camera's main flaw in the picture above, when coming out of the water, it is hard to clear the lens of water, particularly if you and all of your stuff is soaking wet.  All of the underwater cameras including the Gopro seem to have this problem at this time, so not much you can do about it.  

Laguna Beach Octopus

After never seeing an octopus while snorkeling at Laguna Beach, I saw two in one day.  One at Fisherman's Cove and one at Shaw's Cove.  The picture is not very good, but taking pictures of these is challenging.  I can not tell what kind of octopus it is.

I think a lot of people are afraid of going out in the CA ocean because it is "cold".  A lot of this is in your head, people swim in the ocean here all year wearing only a bathing suit.  I have been snorkeling all winter and spring using the O'Neill Wetsuit Reactor 3/2mm Full Suit, it is among the cheapest ones you can buy and it is working just fine for me.  I get at least 40 minutes in the water before I get cold.  The water temperature has been between 55 and 62 this winter and spring.  You will probably need a thicker suit for scuba diving in the winter.