Greg Hoberg and I took his boat down to Carmel Bay in choppy seas for another very good dive yesterday. We crossed Carmel Bay at its mouth and then headed east towards Monastery Beach up the Carmel Canyon branch of the greater Monterey Canyon. This area frequently has whales and Risso's dolphins, the day before we had smelled the breath of a whale (Humpbacks don't floss) in the dense fog, never saw it though. There was some scattered fog and a heavy marine layer but we could see well enough to watch for whales. We weren't disappointed. We soon saw at least six Humpbacks, most very near shore (it's deep right up to the beach at this end of the bay and at the terminus of Carmel Canyon). We spotted one closer to us, headed our way, so Greg stopped the boat and we waited. It was a huge adult Humpback, it had the largest girth I've ever seen a Humpback have, I suspect it was a very pregnant female. She took a breath just about 20 ft from us and raised her fluke up to dive only 20 ft away, truly awesome.
Greg spotted anchovies down over 100 ft and we realized that the action was all down deep, we'd just see the Humpbacks make a couple lazy surface blows then dive. So we decided to go make our first dive (we later decided to make it our only dive because the wind was coming up and we didn't want to get pounded going back to Monterey) off the Butterfly House. We went in close to some wash rocks just offshore, we anchored in 45 ft of water, we were next to a pinnacle, we discovered, that came up to 20 ft. It made a very interesting dive. We had 30 to 40 ft of visibility, 52 degrees. This area still has limited kelp compared to normal but it is definitely starting to come back. Below are some pictures from our dive, for more please go to:
https://goo.gl/photos/uDMkXjAnwB98i5Fa6
Butterfly House is named after its roof's shape in the center background.
There's still way too many sea urchins but the Bull, Giant, and Palm Kelp is starting to slowly recover.
We had good light and good visibility, the kelp is mostly still a bit sparse but it was dense on top to the pinnacle we anchored next to.
Tan and brown Sea Cucumber with a Leather Sea Star
This is a Rough Keyhole Limpet, it uses it's large light colored mantel, here completely covering its shell, to foil the attack of sea stars as it is doing here with a Spiny Sea Star.
Here the Rough Keyhole Limpet's mantle is not out as far since it is no longer threatened by a sea star, there is a smaller Rough Keyhole Limpet just below and to its right.
The pinnacle has large vertical walls dense with invertebrate life.
Hilton's Nudibranch in a tough to photograph with my wide angle dome hole.
Large Spiny Sea Star with my hand for scale.
Looking up a face of the Pinnacle, giant kelp bed grows from the top of it.
Dark brown(ish) Lingcod
Greg getting a Lingcod shot.
Greg with Lingcod that has tired of our close attention.
We moved to the top of the Pinnacle to finish off our dive and make our safety stop.
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