Greg Hoberg and I took advantage of continued good sea conditions for a second day of diving last Thursday. Our first dive was on Mono-lobo where we had 57 degree water temperature and 35 ft of visibility (variable). We had a very good dive and once again Greg's superb underwater navigation brought us right back to the boat. When we surfaced we discovered that the wind had really cranked up and so tried to depart quickly before the wind chop got any larger. Alas, I couldn't raise the anchor (we always try to position it to both hold (hate it when it doesn't!) and be retrievable...But the wind had made the boat shift the anchor. Greg went back in to re-position it, when he surfaced I still couldn't get it free so he went back down and gave three hard tugs so that I would raise it immediately, which was successful. What followed of course was a race to get Greg back in the fast blowing boat before we hit the thick kelp and the breaking waves on the rocks....
Below are pictures from Mono-lobo, you can see more (I shot lot's of kelp-seascape-sun silhouette pictures trying to get one worth of Donna's painting):
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/6196585346011808209?authkey=CP38oNDpm83YfA
A brightly colored Painted Greenling (about 4 inches long) sits among equally beautiful strawberry anemones.
Greg leads the way along the steep wall at the deep edge of Mono-lobo. The dive was bright when you weren't under one of the few areas that still have dense giant kelp cover.
Greg illuminates a large white metredium sea anemone deep(ish, 65 ft or so) on the wall.
Normally this tremendous rock structure would have heavy coverage of Palm Kelp, only a few remain in this photo, they are being devoured by hordes of sea urchins.
Mono-lobo is a magical dive when the sun is out and the water is clear!
Here are a couple of giant kelp holdfasts pulled clear from the bottom. Normally these sometimes fail during big winter storms but they've been failing all year thanks to munching sea urchins in their thousands.
Greg swims up one of the many small canyons found throughout the Mono-lobo site.
Our second dive was our third on a new site we found off Point Joe (near Asilomar and Spanish Bay). The site is marked by the last sizable patch of kelp off Point Joe. This patch always has many sea otters and they seem to be munching enough sea urchins to maintain the kelp bed, fortunately. We had 25 to 35 ft of visibility and 58 degree bottom temperature. Below are some pictures from this dive, to see more go to:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/6196584915527191985?authkey=CN6068bqjfCr8gE
A cabezon, near the palm kelp stalk, is well colored to blend in with the purple coralline algae growing on the bottom.
Greg gets a shot of another cabezon. You can just spot the cabezon as the third corner of a triangle formed by Greg's orange strobe and the blue handle of his underwater camera case.
Greg swims past great rock structures and good stands of giant kelp.
Greg being dive bombed by a swiftly swimming sea lion. Frequently one of us will completely miss seeing a sea lion or harbor seal due to the limited breadth of vision due to our masks.
Greg with some more huge rocks at this site.
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