Cave Diving, Sealife, SoCal Dive

Osborn(e) Bank Redux 2025 (Santa Barbara Island — 225 fsw)

by Brett Eldridge

Background

I had been to Osborne Bank once before in 2020 and really enjoyed the dive and wanted to return. I finally got a chance when Anton had arranged a trip with Danny at Triton Diving Charters.

Osborn Bank is a very picturesque formation a few miles outside Santa Barbara Island in the Channel Islands. It is a few “finger” pinnacles that stick out from a submerged reef and it has a tunnel that goes through the middle. Below is a “map” I drew of the site after my first dive:

The top half of the diagram shows a top-down view and the bottom shows the entrance to the cave/tunnel.

The Dive

We had a planned meeting time on Dec 6th of 6:00am with a planned departure of 6:30am. I loaded up my car with all my gear and headed up to Ventura the night before. We got an early start but it takes 2.5-3 hours to get out to the dive site from Port Hueneme even on Danny’s boat which is pretty fast. I went below and took a short nap on the way out.

The conditions on the way out were amazing. Below is a picture as we were passing Santa Barbara Island:

There were four of us diving: Ross Overstreet, Jeremy Roth, Anton K, and myself. We were basically diving as a team and all four of us had scooters (mine would meet a bad fate but that is for a bit later in the post). It is definitely a site that it is beneficial to have a scooter on as you generally want to cover large distances to get around.

We got on-site and Danny set an anchor at the top of the site (about 170′ deep). I was the last in the water and we all went down the line and went to our first objective which was to go through the tunnel. We all made a couple passes through the tunnel and then set about to explore the area. There were a ton of torpedo rays around and the visibility was excellent as usual.

We had about a 2.5-3 hour run-time and then headed back to shore. It was a long day but an excellent one.

Jeremy Roth got some good candid photos of the fantastic day we had:

Photos

I took my Nikonos RS-13 Fisheye Lens on this dive to get more practice with the lens. It was a good choice and I got some decent photos even though I hadn’t had a lot of practice with the lens. The corners are pretty impressive given that most of these shots are at f/5.6-f/8. None of these photos have been cropped (unless noted).

Anton in the cave with Jeremy following
About half-way through the tunnel
Jermey ahead of me right before the tunnel veers right and down. At this point, unless you know the site, you would not know that is a tunnel.
This is right at the end of the tunnel as it dips down before exiting. You can see a slight halo of light at the end to the right
This is the swim through I have labeled on my map at the end of the finger on the right
If you look closely, there are three torpedo rays in this picture
Another view of the torpedo rays
Jeremy the fish stalker!
Torpedo Ray front-and-center
Another Torpedo Ray – I like the two shadows due to my opposing video lights
Anton in the distance with a torpedo ray in the foreground
Three divers around the anchor chain before we head up for deco

Video Through the Tunnel

Jeremy shot a cool 1.5 minute video going through the tunnel at 230 fsw. This video was made with a Insta 360 camera so you can see all around and it rotates back to show Jeremy in the middle of the run. Thanks to Jeremy for letting me post it here!

Run through the Osborne Bank Tunnel

Death In the Family

I got my DiveX Piranha DPV about 5 years ago. I don’t actually use it that often as I really don’t like the combination of a big camera and a scooter. Others have figured out good ways to do both, but I haven’t spent the time to do that.

Part of the reason is that I just never really liked my DiveX scooter.

I’ve honestly had nothing but problems. I’ve sent it back one or two times due to seals leaking, my pressure sensor died, and I never got it to have good trim and buoyancy and I tried many, many times. Basically, I hated my scooter.

I took my scooter on this dive and it flooded and died after about 10 minutes in the water. It stopped working and got very heavy and I just knew that it was dead. I let the other divers know and stuck around the anchor line and towed my scooter around. I should have left it at the anchor line since it was negatively buoyant but I towed it around for the rest of the dive and did all my deco with it.

When we returned, we opened it up back at the dock. It was not a pretty situation. Thanks to Ross for the video:

Dead soldier

I got the scooter home and didn’t even want to put it into the garage. I stored it outside with the corroded batteries. I didn’t even think about trying to have it fixed. It would have cost more money than it was worth and just decided to take it literally to the dump as electronic recycling.

I am done with my DiveX and likely to get a Genesis scooter at some point in the near future.

Thanks To…

Thanks to Danny at Triton Diving Charters. He runs an amazing operation and it is always great to be out on his boat. This is a very unique dive and Danny is one of the few operators capable of taking you there.

Thanks to my fellow divers: Ross Overstreet, Jeremy Roth, and Anton Kozhevnikov.

Leave a Reply