Dives with Sanctuary on the Pinnacles, Erik's Pinnacle, Aumentos, and Hopkin's Reef, 7-20 and 7-27, 2019

The last two Saturdays in a row Guy Foster and I dived with Sanctuary out of Monterey Bay harbor.  I don't have any pictures from the trip on July 20 because I had my heavily used....maybe a bit abused..Nauticam housing in Backscatter for badly needed repairs.

We had calm conditions on July 20th and went down to dive the outer Pinnacles in Carmel Bay.  I wasn't surprised that the surface was greenish-brown with poor visibility but it just kept getting darker as we descended to 73 ft.  It was black, loosely paraphrasing the wonderful Mark Twain: "The darkest night dive I ever made was one day on the Pinnacles!"  Visibility was maybe a very very dark 5 ft at best.  Our second dive was at Erik's Pinnacle back inside Monterey Bay.  Below a green surface layer down to 20 ft or so it was reasonably clear, 20 to 25 ft.

Saturday, July 27 I had my Nauticam housing delivered to me in the parking lot where Guy and I were getting ready to board Sanctuary by Backscatter's support manager.  We stayed in Monterey Bay because we expected Carmel Bay to still have poor visibility.  Our first dive was at Aumentos, which is a great dive site with large rock structures.  Below the green layer in the top 20 ft we had 25 to 30 ft of visibility.  A very enjoyable dive. Below are some pictures from this dive, to see more, please go to:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/Fi5rcLiJx5g1AsUK7

                                 Painted Greenling

                                Brown Cup Coral, about 3/4 inches across

       Hilton's Nudibranch, about 7 inches long, largest I've seen.

                                Black Eyed Goby

    Cabezon, I tested his patience with multiple photos, can't resist taking pictures of these cool fish.

Our second dive was inside Hopkin's diving its kelp forest.  We had less visibility but diving along the edge of a thriving kelp forest is always a pleasure.Below are some pictures from this dive, for more, please go to:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/DbNEMRwL8zDdN2YC7

    Lingcod, Hopkin's Kelp forest

    Kellet's Whelk laying eggs

                                Small Goby, about 1 1/2 inches long

    Filter feeding Sea Cucumber

                                Kellet's Whelk laying eggs

                                San Diego Dorid Nudibranch

                                Sea Cucumbers with Sea Urchins

Next stop, in a couple weeks, Tonga, hopefully with some cooperative Humpback Whales.