Charlie's Diving Blog: Risso's Dolphins, Monolobo dive, and a mystery fish June 23,2020

Tuesday Greg Hoberg and I took advantage of very nice sea conditions to take his boat down to Carmel Bay. The ride was a lot gentler than our trip last week which was our first since the coronavirus shutdown. On the way down, we had to do some dodging to get through the kelp forest off China Point which is finally recovering from the plague of sea urchins that decimated it five years ago, it's back to about 20% of normal.

As we approached Cypress Point at the north end of Carmel Bay we suddenly started seeing large splashes offshore and quickly realized that there were easily a hundred Risso's dolphins spread over a large area. We had some close approaches, really fun. Some day I'll have to take some more surface pictures....

Because sea conditions were so good we decided to head down to the far end of Carmel Bay and dive Monolobo. Because the swell was small, Greg took us inside the largely (80%) recovered kelp forest to anchor. As we finished getting ready to splash I noticed that my mask wasn't sealing tight on my face like it always does, I had Greg make sure I didn't have the mask lip overlapping my hood, then I splashed. I immediately had water leaking into my mask but Greg splashed and started down the anchor line, as usual, so I followed with a hand on my mask, clearing continually. The leak wouldn't stop regardless of every gyration I tried...We swam out a glorious canyon with 30 ft visibility but I was not having a good time, my eyes were burning and soon my sinuses were clogging making depth changes painful...So, for the first time in 53 years of diving, I aborted our dive at the mid-point. We swam under the kelp ceiling to get back to the boat and Greg went down the anchor line to insure we'd be able to get our anchor up...

So, the previous week's dive trip gave us a very rough ride back and I had a bruised derriere after we got back. When I washed off my dive gear I discovered that my prescription lens had gotten popped out of the mask, which shouldn't happen, but I thought I had correctly reassembled it....But then I had the awful leak on this dive. Once I got home I discovered the real problem, the mask skirt/body itself had a tear in it just behind the lens, the first time I've had a mask failure like that. Well, it was a rough ride.....

Greg and I took his boat up to Monterey Bay to Moss Landing hoping to see whales, we saw a couple in the distance near the whale watching boat Blackfin but didn't fight the growing chop to go see them. We did see a large jumping fish maybe four feet long, it jumped three times. It was shiny in appearance with some green and it had a large frilly tail fin, Not a tuna, don't think it was a mahi mahi, don't know what it was...

Here's a few pictures I took while my eyes were awash with sea water...