Charlie's Diving Blog: Dives inside Sunset Point, Carmel Bay and inside Point Pinos, Monterey Bay May 25, 2016

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Dives inside Sunset Point, Carmel Bay and inside Point Pinos, Monterey Bay May 25, 2016

Greg Hoberg and I had a good second day of diving this week. We headed south to Carmel Bay from Monterey Bay early on Wednesday the 25th with calm seas but strong winds forecast for afternoon. On our trip down we saw two juvenile humpback whales. Our first dive was near where we had dived the day before but more inside of Sunset Point. The swell was small and the kelp nearly non-existent due to the hordes of sea urchins so we dived areas that normally would be very difficult, dark, and with heavy surge. We had blue water, 30 ft visibility buy again very chilly 48 degree temperature. Just after we had surfaced and got our gear off we had a mother gray whale and her calf pass within 20 ft of our boat! If only they had come along 15 minutes earlier while we were still down. Most of the normal kelp is gone from this area with hordes of sea urchins eating all algae in site. There were some stands of sargassum muticum however (not the invasive sargassum I don't believe). http://www.eeb.ucsc.edu/pacificrockyintertidal/data-products/invasive-species/SargassumIdentificationGuide_8.27.15_compressed.pdf

Greg gets a shot of some California Cone snails laying eggs.

Here's a close-up of California Cone snails laying eggs with a sea urchin, blue ring snail, and brittle star also in the mix.

Black and yellow rockfish

Vermilion Rockfish

Decorator crab devouring a bat star

Normally schools of blue rockfish are in giant kelp beds but they are in short supply due to hordes of sea urchins since the sea star wasting disease decimated our sea stars (they are starting to recover, happily). Here the blue rockfish are hanging near a stand of sargassum.