Two Dives at Sammit's Pinnacle/McAbee Beach Pinnacle May 26, 2018

Guy Foster and I had two good dives off the Sanctuary dive boat yesterday.  Winds were high and expected to get still higher so our dive was less than a mile from the harbor but it was a decent dive site.  Guy was making his first dive with his new drysuit and I was making my second dive with a drysuit, a DUI I've gotten from Guy because it wasn't a good fit for him.  We had 15 to 20 ft of visibility, water temp at the bottom was 51 degrees F.  Below are some pictures from the dive, for more please go to: be93https://photos.app.goo.gl/i7lrZ5js09Zpn

Guy getting settled with his new drysuit on our first dive.

                               Rainbow Nudibranch, about 8 inches long, on the hunt for the many tube anemones found on this site.  It's cool to see these nudibranchs attack tube anemones.

    Can you see the cow crab just above the orange sponge?  Just above the crab you can see an upside down sea anemone and a sea urchin on a large, old, encrusted iron chain.

 I took this picture of my gloved hand on the iron chain for scale.  The chains are from a floating structure that was out on this location, it was a transfer station for sardine boats to dump their catches in and which were then pumped a couple hundred yards to the canneries on shore.

 Kelp rockfish near some of the higher rock structure on the site.

                               Guy pretending to be a harbor seal after a rockfish.

                                  Yellow Edged Cadlina Nudibranch with a Red Sea Urchin

                                      Another chain from the old floating sardine transfer structure that used to be on this site.  Read Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

                           The external skeleton of a large cow crab in the process of being recycled by the sea.

Guy admiring the crab carcase. 

    A Sand-Rose Anemone in the foreground, a lingcod passing behind it.

   If you look closely you can see a small juvenile Painted Greenling just behind and to the right of the mouth (crater in the center) of the anemone.  It is one of the only fish in California that can use sea anemones for shelter instead of being eaten by them.

                   Metridium, aka Plumrose, Sea Anemones

 Hermissenda crassicornis, aka Horned Nudibranch, aka Opalescent Nudibranch, about 3 inches long.

Guy getting set to photo the Horned Nudibranch.  While he was doing this, I looked around and up and I had a shocking sight.  Passing above us was what I first thought was a boat on the surface, then realized it wasn't clear enough to see the surface....then wondered what was the huge shadow coming...whale, White Shark?  It turned out to be a huge Mola Mola, at least 8 ft long and about 8 ft high counting its vertical fins, amazing sight.  I couldn't get Guy's attention and didn't ascend enough to photo it, and probably lose Guy's location in the process.....One of these days I'll get a picture of one of these amazing fish. 

                               San Diego Dorid Nudibranch

A good day of diving, good practice with our drysuits.  I'm now quite comfortable with mine and staying warm while diving in Monterey is a very novel experience.  Also, my drysuit's pee zipper also is a nice new feature!

Donna and I are off this week to sail in the San Juan Islands with her college roomate and her husband so no diving for a couple weeks.

My first drysuit dive, at Coast Guard Breakwater May 24, 2018

Yesterday I did a drysuit checkout dive with Adam, the manager of Monterey's Bamboo Reef Dive Shop.  Also, some surface pictures of Otter Cove's Giant Kelp Bed and Purse Seine boats off Hopkin's Marine Lab harvesting "market" squid.

First, the pictures.  I drove down to Pacific Grove to stay at our rental home for the night so that I could get started early prepping for my drysuit dive the next morning.  I went for a walk and was pleased to see that Otter Cove, close to shore, has about 25% of its normal kelp forest.  Since we've early on the kelp growing season I'm hoping the kelp bed will grow in size through the summer and early fall.

   Near shore kelp beds stretching from the west side of Lover's Point to Otter's Cove

     Kelp Beds from the West side of Lover's Point to Otter Cove

Also while walking on the Monterey/Carmel recreation trail, I saw that quite a few of the purse seiners that are harvesting squid that Greg and I saw on our dive trip last week are still at it.

     Purse seiners looking east from Lover's Point

                                Purse Seiners looking NW from near Hopkin's Marine Lab

I met Adam at Bamboo Reef to show him my drysuit and underlayer before we set off for the Coast Guard Breakwater to do my drysuit checkout dive.  Adam reviewed with me what he'd have me do on our dive, which we covered again after suiting up in the Breakwater parking lot.

Once suited up I was pleased with the flexibility that I had in the DUI drysuit compared to my heavy extra thick custom wetsuit from Otter Bay Wetsuits and Drysuits.  Wading into the water at the beach it was very strange for my feet and legs to stay dry, followed swiftly by being completely immersed and still dry except for my head.  We spent several minutes at the dive float Adam had brought so that we could trim my weight to be only very slightly negative with BC and suit fully deflated (I was pleased at how easily I could deflate my suit so that I felt "shrink wrapped".  I had added 3 lbs of lead to my weight belt before the dive and I also had a pair of light ankle weights (less than 2 lbs total) that Donna has used for years to try to prevent "light feet" since my Scubapro Nova wing fins are very lightweight.  To trim my weight we ended up taking 5 lbs of lead out of the back pockets on my BC.  I happily found that, as weighted, I was very stable and balanced in buoyancy during the dive.  I'll need to trim a little differently for my next dive with my dive camera since it is 3 to 4 lbs negative buoyancy and will be at my upper body.
Adam had me stand on my head to force air up into my feet and then do rolls to correct, then practice attaching and detaching my suit's inflator hose to make sure that I can swiftly disconnect in case of a stuck inflator hose.  I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I felt perfectly relaxed and comfortable in a drysuit instead of a heavy wetsuit.  I was amazed at how warm I stayed though I could tell the the insulation of the drysuit undergarment is critical to being warm.  My dry feet and hands were very warm, too.  I was surprised at the dexterity I had with the built in dry gloves on the drysuit.

I'm now a drysuit diver, now I've got to pay Guy for it!  Guy just got his new drysuit and we're hoping to dive with the Sanctuary tomorrow, though the wind forecast has just became poor for tomorrow...

Really Good Dives at Mono-lobo and Fire Rock May 16, 2018

Greg Hoberg and I took advantage of great, calm, sea conditions, something that has been rare this spring, to take his rigid inflatable boat down to Carmel Bay to dive at Mono-lobo and off Pescadero Point on Fire Rock.   As we left the Monterey Harbor we saw about 40 commercial fishing boats purse seining for squid off Hopkin's Marine Lab and Lover's Point.  There were quite a number of Risso's dolphins, which feed exclusively on squid, all through the area.  The water in Monterey Bay was quite green as we enter the summer season of dense plankton and algae blooms...Sadly all the way from Monterey Harbor down into Carmel Bay we saw only a few small patches of kelp.  I'd say kelp is down about 95% from normal.  There are still hordes of sea urchins creating urchin barrens and a recent article said that now the adult sized sea urchins are so starved that there is not enough nutrition in them to make it worth the work a sea otter must do to eat them.  We had very calm conditions so sped quickly down to Carmel Bay.

At Mono-lobo we were encouraged to see that its kelp bed, which recovered last summer to maybe 75% of normal, seems to be maintaining itself and may expand further now that we are at the point of the year of maximum kelp growth.  From the surface we estimated that we'd have 30 ft visibility but our actual visibility varied from 30 ft to maybe 20 ft, not bad by summer standards.  Water temp was 52.7 F at the surface, a chilly 48 degrees at the bottom.  We were please to not see hordes of sea urchins on our dive.  We saw the usual mix of lingcod and rockfish on our dive, but no Cabezon.

                               Vermilion Rockfish, they just look like a dark brown fish at the depths where you see them until your strobe adds back the red light that was attenuated by water absorption.

Vermilion Rockfish above, Treefish (another type of rockfish) below.  Both species tend to be a bit shy, especially Treefish, so I was pleased to get both in a shot.

                                     Mono-lobo has a kelp forest again!

                                        Greg spotted a couple different UFOs, unidentified floating objects, aka Whatsits.  TBD...

                                          Check out the Treefish's pink lips.

                                                  San Diego Dorid Nudibranch, almost five inches long.

    A pair of White Dendronotid Nudibranchs, a couple inches long.  Not bad with my wide angle fish eye 10-17 mm Tokina lens.

                                         Bull Kelp at the surface

                                       Frond of giant kelp on the surface above bull kelp, so glad to have Mono-lobo's kelp forest back, it sure makes safety stops more relaxing and interesting.


For more pictures from our dive at  Mono-lobo please go to:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/uuHu82ZxEwt1AOCj1

Our second dive was at Fire Rock off Pescadero Point.  We had 15 to 20 ft of visibility, the water was quite green.  Water temp was 49 degrees.  Sadly, the site is almost without kelp, normally anchoring here is a challenge because of its huge, wide, dense, kelp bed.  Now there are hordes of sea urchins stripping it of all forms of kelp and algae.

 This rock should have giant or bull or at least palm kelp attached, instead it is covered in sea urchins...

                                                 White Sea Anemone

               A pair of beautiful Chestnut Cowries, with their mantels out covering much of their shells.

 In the center of the picture you can see an acorn barnacle with his legs out snatching plankton from the water.  It's heavily covered by strawberry or club, anemones.  The density of life at Fire Rock, along with the color, is amazing.

Short spine purple sea urchins and longer spined red sea urchin.

                                          Black and Yellow Rockfish

To the right and below the dark hole in the center are living acorn barnacles, there are lots and lots more of these than before the sea star wasting disease devastated their main predator starting in 2013,  though their numbers (except for the sunflower star) are slowly recovering.  The large hole is a left behind hole from the death of a large, now gone, acorn barnacle.  Above the hole, to the left are the empty skeletons of a couple of acorn barnacles, probably devoured by a sea star.

To see more pictures from this dive please go to:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/uIeklOn5wG5UMGOs2

Between dives Greg flew his new, amazing, compact drone.  I look forward to getting bird's eye video of our favorite dives sites.   After our second dive we cruised up Monterey Bay to Moss Landing in search of whales.  On our way back from Moss Landing we spotted some whale watching boats and swung by for a look.  We lucked out with first sea lions, and then six humpbacks surfacing near Greg's boat.  A great day's outing.