This weekend Monterey and Pacific Grove hosted triathlons on Saturday and Sunday which blocked access to our favorite Monterey shore dive sites so Tom Healy took me too a shale reef and its kelp bed off of Del Monte Beach. I'd wanted to dive the shale reef for several years so finally got to see it. We had twenty feet of visibility and 59 degree surface temperature, 56 degrees at the bottom in forty feet of water. The shale reef is a very long swim offshore, maybe two hundred yards or so after about a hundred yard walk in full gear....
The shale reef is really cool, it is a series of ledges that reminds me of the limestone ledges found offshore in the Gulf of Mexico off the west coast of Florida where I started diving forty-eight years ago. But the Gulf has grouper instead of rockfish and doesn't have giant kelp forests and harbor seals..
Copper rockfish, kelp rockfish, and tube anemones in front of a shale ledge.
Tom with the shale ledge. There is a series of ledges winding through the area.
We saw lots of Sea Hare sea slugs laying eggs. Perhaps due to the far warmer than usual water temperature, there are more sea hares in the area than I've ever seen before.
No, Tom is not preparing to spear the harbor seal, Tom has a video camera and video light attached to his spear gun.
Tom with his new friend.
To see more pictures from this dive, please go to:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/6194567581018378001?authkey=COKtt_mx4r3z7gE
To see a video of our harbor seal please see the video.
https://youtu.be/-94BFYotReY
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