On Sunday I did a solo shore dive off Coral Street, Pacific Grove. It was a great reminder that shore diving is a lot more concentrated work than boat diving! Visibility was a disappointing 15 ft and there was a significant intermittent surge from periodic large swell sets. I found a 25 to 30 lb weightbelt early in the dive but decided to leave it rather than abort my dive to lug it to shore.....
On Monday Greg Hoberg and I took his boat around from Monterey Bay to Carmel Bay. There was a moderate swell and some chop but it was worth it for the clear water in Carmel Bay. We saw several Grey whales on our ride down (and some more on the way back). There were several kayakers fishing at our preferred dive spot for the sea conditions, the wash rock off Pescadero Point. Instead we dived just offshore east of the Lone Cypress in 30 to 50 ft of water. The kelp coverage was sparse for this area - probably a combination of the series of storms and big swells and sea urchin depredation (sea urchin populations have exploded since the sea star wasting disease killed off the vast majority of sea stars which feed on young sea urchins), normally it would be difficult to get the boat to this area. We had around 25 ft visibility on this dive and 57 degree water (5 to 7 degrees warmer than normal, quasi El Nino impact). Due to the sparse kelp we also had great light. Some pictures below.
Near Lone Cypress
Would you say that there was a plethora of blue rockfish?
My favorite local fish model, the Cabezon.
Greg getting some shots of a kelp crab immersed in kelp.
We saw many ling cod on this dive.
Here is one of the many kelp holdfasts that no longer have the kelp. Look closely and you will see many brittle star arms. Look even closer and you may pick out a couple of horned nudibranchs.
We had great visibility and great sunlight, the sparser than normal kelp really helped.
Great rock structure.
Olive rockfish
To see more from this dive please go to:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/6098845589722865201?authkey=CPP424Td6MX1pgE
Pescadero Point - our second dive was right off Pescadero Point, we had 30 ft visibility, sometimes maybe even more.
Greg cruising along a wall that runs parallel to shore along Pescadero Point.
What is wrong with this picture? I'm not talking about light or focus or framing....There are two mussels attached to the rock down 40 ft deep!? Normally you never find mussels much below the low water line because they are swiftly devoured by sea stars but the sea star population is a tiny fraction of normal since the sea star wasting virus swept through.
More big rock structure, if you look closely you can see Greg waiting to get a shot of me coming under the overhang.
Greg getting a shot. Not the scattering of sea urchins and lack of palm or giant kelp.
There are orders of magnitude more sea urchins than I've ever seen here before and only about 5% of the normal kelp coverage. Normally we couldn't have gotten Greg's boat within 75 yards of where we anchored.
We saw lots of lingcod on this dive too.
A decent photo of a two inch nudibranch considering the wide angle lens I was using.
A large acorn barnacle, I think there are more of these since the sea star decimation as well.
To see more pictures from this dive please go to:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/6098846367775812353?authkey=CI3WlZfuzPPpeA
