Greg Hoberg and I dived the Pinnacles again yesterday. There was a 4 - 5 foot westerly swell running so other sites were washed out. We had great dives - we could see the bottom 50 ft below us while still up in the boat so vertical visibility was easily 50 ft and horizontal at the bottom more like 40 ft. With the large long period swell we got moved around a lot even down 60 ft. When a big set came by when we were in one of the many narrow canyons we'd get shot 10 -15 ft in each direction. Lot's of blurred photos for discard...
We were buzzed by sea lions, saw tons of fish, big schools of blue rockfish, black rockfish, gopher rockfish, tree fish, black and yellow rockfish, greenlings, cabezon, ling cod, and sheepshead. We also saw three octopus (octopi?), Greg's wide beam spotter light is superb for spotting cool invertebrates. Two of the octopus were with sea stars dead from the wasting disease - we wonder if they were feeding on them or could they somehow be associated with the sea star's demise (seems unlikely but scientists don't know the cause of the sea star wasting yet).
Below are a couple of pictures, for more, please go to:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/5943391340567401825?authkey=CKfcsNiw5qzEQw
Entertaining sea lions kept moving fast.
I moved too much in the surge so I've scared this lingcod before Greg could get close enough for a shot.
Greg spotted this octopus on the Palm kelp after he first spotted the sea star below the octopus that had died from wasting disease. We saw a number of dead/dying sea stars of a couple of different types but many many more healthy ones.
I've got my hand in this photo to show the size of the little octopus.
Purple striped sea nettle.
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