Cypress Point, Inner Wash Rocks January 6, 2017

Greg Hoberg and I took advantage of the proverbial "calm before the storm" and snuck in a dive on Friday just ahead of a major Pacific Storm which is raining hard on our place in Pacific Grove as I write this.  We had very calm conditions so were able to comfortably dive the inner wash rocks at Cypress Point, a favorite dive site but only when the swell is small.  On the ride down and the ride back we saw humpback and gray whales, which have a pronounced V or heart shaped blow when viewed from the right angle.  We also heard some kind of marine mammal clicking to do echo location during our dive, a new sound for us, we were hoping to see whatever it was.....At the end of our dive after we got back into Greg's boat we saw Gray whales passing just outside the outer rock at Cypress Point, if we had dived the outer rock we may have gotten to see a Gray whale...

On our dive we were really pleased to see lots of large, healthy, Ocher and Spiny (and the usual Bat) stars.  It was great to see them back after the wasting disease.  We were also pleased to see, not coincidentally, greatly reduced numbers of sea urchins, and some new Palm Kelp growing.  On our dive we saw lingcod, cabezon, and rock fish.  We also saw a large group of Leafy Hornmouth snails laying eggs.  Below are some photos from our dive trip, if you'd like to see more, please go to:  https://goo.gl/photos/fG7Pmukv2DHTxBep8

        We weren't pleased to find a dead sea lion at the launch ramp as we started out trip, you can see the shark bite crescent....This contributed to my preferring to dive the inner wash rock at Cypress Point because the outer rock is really in deeper, exposed water with no giant kelp right now....but we probably missed seeing passing Gray Whales (and our maybe our mystery echo locator - they've been seeing Orcas frequently..) due to being inside the inner rocks..

  Greg gets set for a lingcod shot.  As you can see we had very good, about 40 ft visibility.  Moderate 51 degree temperature....moderate by local standards!

                     I had a big smile as I took a quick photo of this well fed Ocher Sea Star with a bat star.

                                        Black and Yellow Rock Fish

                                    Sea urchin horde is greatly diminished and the Palm Kelp is recovering.
                                     

Lots of big fat healthy sea stars, hurray!

Greg gets a shot of a group of Leafy Hornmouths laying eggs.

A large group of Leafy Hornmouth snails laying yellow eggs.

The roundish lumps in this picture are large acorn baranacles whose outer shells are buried by strawberry anemones.  If you look closely at centers on a couple of them you make out the shell of the barnacle.  There's a point to this, if you look 1/3 from bottom and 1/3 from right of photo you can even see the legs of one barnacle out catching plankton.  The numbers, density, and size of acorn barnacles are way up since the decimation of large sea stars by the wasting disease four years ago.

Theses are the fresh white skeletons remaining from Acorn Barnacles that have been munched by the beg fat Ocher Sea Stars that are back on the scene.  It's a rough neighborhood down there.

See it?  Greg takes a shot of a beautiful, well camouflaged Cabezon.

Cabezon do a great job of matching their colors to their surroundings.  His red stands out a bit due to my flash.  I should have also taken a natural color shot.  We scare about half the Cabezon we encounter because we blunder too close without seeing them.