Wharf 2, aka Commercial Wharf, Monterey Post Retirement Dive #834 June 7, 2025

I've heard of the great macro diving at Wharf 2 for years and have recently been seeing a number of posts online from dives there. Yesterday Guy Foster and I decided to dive the wharf because of the unfortunate breakdown of Beachopper II. We had a very good, long 1 hour 20 minute dive with very good visibility, for the wharf, of about 20 ft. Hundreds of nudibranchs! We hadn't done a beach dive in a few years and boy, are they a lot more physical work than boat dives! We had about a 50 yard walk through the sand to reach the water (it felt like 200 yards!) and then, following the excellent, helpful, advice of a couple other divers that took pity on wharf newbies, did a long surface snorkel swim, well past the first sharp bend, dropping near the second "kink" in the wharf. We were instantly rewarded with a macro target rich environment. It was my first dive with my birthday present (I'll be 72 in nine days) from my wife, Donna, a new BC which will be great for travel because it is much lighter and more compact it is of the backfloat type as opposed to a wrap around and it will allow me to use its integrated weights instead of the separate weightbelt I've been using with my old BC for a couple decades...The new BC worked spendidly. Maximum depth 27 ft, 56 degrees. I was chilled in my wetsuit for the last 20 minutes... Some pictures from the dive below, all shot with my 60 mm Canon lens. To see the rest of the pictures from the dive please go to: https://photos.app.goo.gl/JQm4NzfJr7npzHWu9 Upon descending I immediately realized there were beautiful invertebrates everywhere you looked, on the pilings and in the sand between them. Below: a small crab on a tube anemone

Engard! If you look closely, you can just make out the beady little eyes of this 2 inch crab with his outreached claws, below:

Below: Scientific name: Hermissenda opalescens Common name: Opalescent Nudibranch I quickly realized (I miss identified them as Horned Nudibranchs, Hermisenda Crassicornis at the time...the difference is subtle) that these nudibranchs were present in the hundreds (like ants one fellow diver commented). Here's the first of many I photographed.

Another cool crab, maybe 3 inches across, below:

Above: Strawberry Anemones, aka Club Tipped Anemones, very beautiful in macro. There were lots of small juvenile rockfish all around, below are a couple of them:

More Opalescent Nudibranchs, hey, they're beautiful. Below: Love this one making its way across a Bryozoan colony.

Below: Foreground, Black Eyed Goby, background, Opalescent Nudibranch

Opalescent Nudibranch with a pair of clam siphons to its left, below:

Below: A pair of pictures with the Opalescent Nudibranch on the left, and if you look carefully, a Dock Shrimp (aka Coonstripe Shrimp) in the center of the photograph.

A very helpful diver told us where we could reliably find one or more Spanish Shawl Nudibranchs (they sport the colors of Donna's alma mater University of Florida...yep I married a gator, I'm a true Florida boy..) and how to find the spot. Sure enough, we found it! Below:

There were also juvenile flatfish (sand dabs, flounder,....) in abundance:

This was, I think, a new type of nudibranch for me, Black Dorid, aka Barnacle Eating Dorid, each about 1/2 inch long, below:

Guy later spotted a larger Black Dorid on the leg of a Decorator Crab climbing on a column:

As we started making our way back to end the dive I spotted the second of these nudibranchs I've ever seen, Scientific name: Triopha maculata Common name: Spotted Triophaabout 4 inches long, below:

A great, fun, macro dive at the wharf. Must do it again! A week from now I'll be on a long anticipated 22 day diving trip, 5 days shore bound, 17 days on a liveaboard, in the Philippines. Possibly I'll squeeze one more dive in next week...