Coastguard Breakwater, Friday October 10, 2014

Greg Hoberg and I were planning to dive either the outer Monterey Bay or do our usual jaunt down to Carmel Bay but as we were passing Hopkin's Marine Station a warning buzzer went off and we had a "no oil" alarm!  We new we had plenty of oil but were concerned that the oil injection had failed...though we hoped it was a sensor failure.  So we slowly motored back to the Coastguard Breakwater and did a dive about 3/4 of the total length from shore.  We had a good dive with an energetic cormorant repeated diving into the rocks around us and occasional buzzing sea lions.  We had 15 to 20 feet of visibility and 56 degree water.  We saw the usual tube anemones in the sand with a new (to us) type of fish in a burrow in the sand munching on a small crab carcass.  We saw several lingcod, striped sea perch, and Rubberlip sea perch.

 Greg took some shots of this little guy too so I hope with his pictures we can figure out what fish he is.

 There are several types of burrowing anemones to be found in the sand along the breakwater.

 A variety of tube worm colors.

 Obviously I have trouble resisting photographing posing lingcod.

 A photo bombing juvenile blue rockfish - he better watch out or he will be lingcod lunch.

 Still got his portrait.

 The striped sea perch seem more relaxed with divers at the breakwater no doubt to the many times they see divers.

 The cormorant was always moving very fast and rapidly sticking his head into holes around us trying to catch his lunch.  I suspect our stirring things up created hunting opportunities for him.

 Ok, now I've been repeatedly mooned by a cormorant.

Rubberlip Sea Perch

To see more pictures from this dive, please go to:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/6069086532926305953?authkey=CP_1jOzC37qtmAE