Ghost Tree, Carmel Bay June 24, 2017

Greg Hoberg and I got out for a second day in the row to dive.  We had very good sea conditions for both the ride down to Carmel and the return.  Water visibility was 15 ft, temperature was 50 degrees.  Ghost Tree is just to the WNW of Pescadero Point.  Normally this area is shrouded in Giant Kelp but right now the entire area is a sea urchin barrens.  Almost zero vegetation to be seen.  Also, and not coincidentally, there are almost no large sea stars in the area.  Because I had anticipated very limited visibility based on our trip the day before I had decided to shoot with my 60 mm Canon lens instead of my usual wide angle.

                                          Orange Cup Coral

                                Yellow Dorid Nudibranch

                                          Baby Bat Star with my finger for scale...

                                Black and Yellow Rockfish

                                Coralline Sculpin

                             Sea Urchins mobbing and devouring the remains of the only Palm Kelp stalk I saw on the dive.....May this plague soon pass...

                                          Tube Worm

                                          Filter Feeding Acorn Barnacle

                                          TBD Sea Anemone

    Painted Greenling

   To see more pictures from this dive please go to:
https://goo.gl/photos/R7oSBYJao15NCViJ6

After the dive Greg spotted a humpback about a mile offshore breaching.  As we rode out through the SW chop for a closer look we saw at least two full breaches by the enormous mom and her calf breached at least 15 times, great fun.  The action ended as we got close enough for pictures....

Mono-lobo June 22, 2017

Greg Hoberg and I took advantage of reasonable sea conditions to take his boat down to Carmel Bay.  Seas from the SW caused us to go across the Bay to get shelter from Point Lobos.  Though we saw some clearer water at the north end of the Bay we only had 15 ft at Monolobo water temp was a chilly 49 at the bottom.  We were very pleased to see that the Giant Kelp and Bull Kelp are finally starting to recover at Monolobo.  Below are some photos from this dive, for more from this dive please go to:
https://goo.gl/photos/9BF195Xj895akqcK9

A sea lion barked at us several times on the dive, I managed to catch this shot of him buzzing past.

                        Greg in the green water we had on this dive, but look, kelp!

                        Anemones and orange sea cucumbers

                                  Healthy Spiny Sea Stars, fewer sea urchins, more kelp

                         Ohdner's Nudibranch

                                   Anemone and Black and Yellow Rockfish

Celebrating 50 years of diving, a fun Octopus encounter, Komodo, Indonesia from January, 2014

May 7, 2017 was my fifty year anniversary of becoming a certified scuba diver in 1967.  I already celebrated with a wonderful diving trip on the Nai'a in Fiji last month.  I've decided to gather together favorite diving photos from my half century of diving.  I started with the more recent years with photos conveniently on file on my laptop.  Yesterday I enjoyed finding a sequence of photos recording a really long, fun, encounter with an octopus in Komodo, Indonesia, on the Seven Seas dive boat in 2014.  I think you'll enjoy these too.

 While wandering about by myself in Horseshoe Bay, Rinca, I came upon a nice sized Day Octopus, Octopus cyanea, I believe, out actively hunting.  I ended up spending at least 20 to 30 minutes with it, great fun.

 The Day Octopus can change colors in the blink of an eye, really amazing. This Octopus would have easily been 3 ft across, the head was over a foot long.

                           Blink, another color change.  It changes it's skin texture, too.

   I showed my wife this picture and she suspects that the white edged scars are from a struggle - maybe territorial, maybe romantic, with another octopus.  The octopus was totally relaxed with me hovering about, it was obviously actively hunting.

   Here a number of fish have become excited with the octopus hunting - things would try to escape as it reached into holes and the fish were eager to get a shot.  The beautiful grouper at the left of the picture is facing the octopus, you see it, right?

   I've drawn a green circle around the octopus to help the camouflage challenged.

The grouper wasn't threatening the octopus in any way, too large for this grouper, it was just intently focused on ambushing whatever escaped the octopus.

 Here the beautiful Lyretail Grouper is practically brushing my wide angle lens dome as he hovers behind the grouper.

 Here you can see how this beautiful grouper gets its common name of White Margin Lyretail Grouper from the white (ish) upper, lower, and rearmost margin of its tail fin.

 

The octopus slowed down again as it reached into every crevice, I finally broke off, I needed to save some nitrox for my safety stop. It was time to leave the octopuses garden, in the shade... I think every diver dreams of having an octopus encounter like this one.  They are wondrous creatures.