Night Dive!

So last Thursday Morgan and I went on a night dive hoping to find our large friend the Great Pacific Octopus.  We have found him during the day sleeping in his den but that isn't too exciting because he is huge and we want to see him out and about.  So we know the octopus go hunting at night and sleep during the day.  Finally I had a night off of work and we decided to go try and find him, we were also hoping to find a 6 gill shark which our known for feeding around 80 feet in the Puget Sound area, specifically around Alki.  So hopes were up, it was below freezing outside and I am in a wet suit so I knew it would be a cold finish to the dive.  We were in the water around 9:45 pm, the tide was fully out.  It was pitch black dark underwater, only being able to see where your flashlight shined.  If you turned your head to the right or left it was like looking at a black wall.  We saw some cool fish, the ground was alive with crabs, starfish, prawns, and shrimp.  As we were heading to the octopus den I saw a large grayish color hovering above us, Morgan hadn't scene it yet (wimpy light) my heart jumped, my first thought was it was a 6 gill shark but quickly I figured out it was a seal.  A old friend told me at night they would sometimes hunt off your light.  The seal looked huge!  It got lower to where Morgan finally noticed it, he stopped and froze.  It then grabbed a crab off the the ground and quickly disappeared into the darkness.  Morgan looked at me with a "What do we do now look". I quickly figured out he either didn't get a good look and wasn't sure what we just saw or he had no idea seals like to hunt off lights.  We continued on and after a minute, sure enough the seal reappeared, held for awhile, hit the ground (I think this time he got a prawn) and vanished into the deep dark abyss.  Morgan looked a little fragile for awhile, we found the den and he let me get down on the ground and peek into it.  I saw a little risen sut in the water but no octopus.He must of recently left the den.  I was curious if he was swimming near us watching us, this 10 plus food octopus.  They are very curious.  We kept a look out for him, I even carried around a de-pinched rock crab incase we came across him or the seal.  I have seen video's of octopus taking crab from divers.   That was disappointing we never saw him but we both had already saw a first with the seal, so we were pretty excited to talk about it after the dive.  Morgan took a few pictures and we continued looking around, saw some huge prawns. mmmmm wish it was season!  We went to a depth of 48 feet and stayed under for 45 minutes, I need to check my temp gage to see how cold it was.  Morgan had a little ear problems and I gave him the "I am chilled" sign and we headed back.  A great dive and I will always remember my first dive visited by a seal, it only took 70 dives.