Guy Foster and I had two very enjoyable dives off the Sanctuary dive boat out of Monterey on Saturday. Conditions were very calm with pretty heavy fog. We were at first disappointed when Mitch (captain) told us we wouldn't be going to Carmel Bay due to the very heavy smoke filling the bay from the New Sobranes fire but our Monterey Bay dives were very good and both were on sites I haven't dived before. Our first dive was at "Ball Busters", which is named for the many lead balls from trawl nets that have been lost on the pinnacles at Ball Busters. The bottom at Ball Busters is at 100 ft, the top of the main pinnacle is 69 ft. I've wanted to dive it for a few years and really enjoyed our dive. This was probably a new depth record for Guy. We had at least 30 ft of visibility at the bottom, maybe as much as 40 ft. Temperature at the bottom was 51 degrees and we got chilled fairly fast with our compressed wetsuits at these depths (Guy and I were the only knuckle draggers with wetsuits, the other divers were diving with drysuits, of course). Ball Busters has great fields of Metridium white anemones. To see more from this dive, please go to:
https://goo.gl/photos/RQVBUL69aCoaQutE7
Guy signals ok as we start our exploration of the pinnacle at Ball Busters at 91 ft. The water was quite clear, it was dark due to depth, heavy fog on the surface, and a plankton bloom underway in the top 30 ft.
Guy getting shots of his first Metridium sea anemones.
Guy getting more metridium sea anemone pictures
Metridium anemones with strawberry anemones.
Guy getting a lingcod shot as we make our way back to the anchor to start our ascent.
Making our way up with our fellow divers to do a safety stop at 20 ft for three minutes. You can see our dive boat, the Sanctuary, above us. A plankton bloom is underway turning the water green. You want to surface near the boat at Ball Busters because you are in a high boat traffic area off Point Pinos.
Our second dive was about a quarter mile off Del Monte Beach so not far from the Monterey Harbor. The shale reef we dived was in 59 ft of water, 54 degrees. We only had around 15 ft of visibility at the surface due to the plankton bloom but it opened up near the bottom where we had at least 30 ft of visibility. One of the Sanctuary's crew pointed out that we were diving on shale instead of granite because we had crossed over one of the ancillary fault lines of the San Andreas fault and so were on quite different geology. I've dived shallower shale reefs along the west edge of the giant kelp bed off Del Monte but never this deeper shale reef. The reef was beautiful and had a great, varied, population of rock fish - Vermilion, Olive, Black, Blue, and Kelp. To see many more pictures from this dive, please go to:
https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipP6vZ_TkDL4HPWAssoU40JSjoIWcLPbZ-4N2ULy
Guy get's ready to do a giant stride off the Sanctuary's dive platform to start our dive on the Shale Reef.
The shale reef is full of life. Left to right, black eyed goby, a whelk snail, red encrusting sponge, and a fish eating anemone.
Guy approaches a bend in the shale reef.
Guy above the shale reef, it was quite dark at 60 ft, it was clear at the bottom but there was a heavy plankton bloom in the top 30 ft.
I never have enough Vermilion Rockfish photos, it seems.
Vermilion Rockfish actually appear gray brown before being illuminated by my strobe because normally there is no red light to speak of down 60 ft/
Here's a Vermilion Rockfish in front of the shale reef with no strobe - and no color correction for red light loss.
Sea Lemon Nudibranch with a small fish perched on his back, if you look closely.
Guy with the Shale Reef.
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