Good dive on Mono-lobo July 12, 2022

Greg Hoberg and I caught a nice calm day and took his RIB around the Monterey Peninsula to Carmel Bay. We stopped and looked at the Pinnacles and were very pleased to see that the Bull Kelp that had been gradually re-colonizing the Pinnacles was now joined by a significant amount of Giant Kelp. The total kelp is now about half of summertime normal. We were also glad to see a large group of sea otters parked in the kelp. We decided to take advantage of the calm conditions and cross the bay to Mono-lobo. As soon as we left the Pinnacles we saw large numbers, at least a couple of hundred, Risso's Dolphins, including several of the smallest calfs we'd every seen, maybe 3.5 ft long. Next we started seeing lots of Pacific White-sided Dolphin, eager to play in our boat's wake and in its bow wave. Mono-lobo has a lot of kelp, both Bull and Giant, but still only 60% or so of normal. We could see that the water was quite clear and we had 40 ft visibility on our dive, 51 degrees temperature. Below are some photos from our dive, you can see more at:

Greg retrieves our anchor from a crevass between huge bolders that I had managed to drop the anchor into and which would have prevented raising it after our dive.

Though the kelp is gradually recovering there are still too many urchins on much of the reef.

We had a curious Vermilion Rockfish greet us and I took way too many pictures of him.

Gopher Rockfish