Guy Foster and I had two good dives with the Sanctuary dive boat last Saturday. We had fairly light seas and fairly light winds ahead of a strong cold front forecasted to sweep in the following morning. On our trip down we saw several migrating Gray Whales.
Our first dive was at Fire Rock off Pescadero Point in Carmel Bay. We had great visibility, 45 to 50 ft, and great light from cloudless skies. The water was a chilly 49 degrees. The kelp bed at Fire Rock is almost non existent right now from a combination of hordes of sea urchins and rough winter seas tearing what little was there away. Below are some photos from our dive, for more, please go to:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/PgbwJX3m4CcRCCzC3
Guy splashes in the clear blue water for our dive at Fire Rock.
Fire Rock has large ledges, here's Guy making his way along one.
A large sea lemon nudibranch, about five inches long.
Guy getting a shot, you can see that the light and visibility were pretty good.
See the large blue-green Cabezon? She's lying just above the small green clump of algae in the foreground, her nose is just to the left and just below the purple sea urchins on the right of the picture. Find her eye? She was shy, just got this one photo.
Where you find Giant Green Anemones, it's usually turbulent water, but we had small swell running on Saturday.
Guy getting set for a shot.
There were some small stands of Palm Kelp at the tops of the pinnacles at Fire Rock, but little surviving Giant or Bull Kelp. Still way too many urchins.
I found this huge (50 lbs, I'd guess) lingcod, well camouflaged, sitting on a ledge. Can you spot it? Just to the right of center of the picture, the head at the top facing away.
Guy maneuvering for a shot of the big lingcod.
Here's a closer picture of the big, very well camouflaged lingcod. Center of picture, facing right, find the tail to the left of center.
Because of concerns that the wind would come up and the seas would build, Sanctuary went back to Monterey Bay for our second dive. We anchored on Aumentos, which has really great rock structure but at the cost of exposure to boat traffic when on the surface and sometimes significant currents. The water was quite green, surprisingly for this time of year, and full of Moon Jellies and Sea Nettles near the surface, but happily, the visibility was decent at the bottom (48 to 80 ft), about 25 ft of visibility. Below are some photos from our dive, for more, please go to:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/mKEvUHMmSjIYIFl02
Aumentos has large rock structures throughout the site.
White-Plumed Anemones aka Metridium, aka Plumrose
Guy with Moon Jelly and Sea Nettles
No comments:
Post a Comment