Greg Hoberg and I took advantage of a one day break in the nearly endless spring wind and seas to catch a calm day for a dive last Thursday. On the cruise down to Carmel we saw boats trawling for squid in Monterey Bay. Right after rounding Point Pinos we encountered a very large, very spread out pod of Rizzo's dolphins, obviously hunting squid, each one we saw was headed in a different direction on a broad area north of Point Joe. Then we were entertained by Pacific White Sided Dolphins that came over and intercepted us and accompanied us with frequent leaps for a few hundred yards. The water looked quite clear, with good color. We went inside Carmel Bay and dived near "Ghost Tree" along what is called the "ling cod reef", just offshore. We anchored by one less than 1/2 acre patch of Giant Kelp where in the past pre 2013 Sea Star wasting disease and the following, related, explosion in sea urchins, there would have been many many acres of dense, continuous, impenetrable kelp forest that would normally prevent us getting his boat within hundreds of feet of where we anchored. We spotted a Gray Whale just past where we were anchored, headed north, as we prepared for our dive. The dive was good, 50 degree temperature, 35 feet of visibility with small lingcod and some rockfish.
Juvenile lingcod tucked in with growing kelp. The great news is that there is growing kelp!
Greg swimming past some of the large rock structures we saw on this dive.
Here's the small patch of Giant Kelp we anchored next to for our dive, you can see through it. It's about 1% or less of what would normally be found at the north end of Carmel Bay along "Lingcod Reef". There was more getting started and there were not hordes of sea urchins...but still fewer sea stars than in the past by at least an order of magnitude...
Greg found a Red Rock Crab
This spiny sea star concerns me, he's twisted, apparently on himself, I'm concerned that he may be succumbing to the wasting disease but I did see other health stars and I didn't see any actually disintegrating as they do when they die. Note sea urchin out in open which used to be rare to see...
Greg swims over a large crevasse with the patch of Giant Kelp in the background. Good visibility.
Large crab with bat star.
Yellow Edged Cadlina Nudibranch, about 3 inches long. Not bad for my wide angle lens.
To see more from this dive please go to:
https://goo.gl/photos/fHZZh3aZqKHeVjnY6
We were thoroughly chilled and near our no decompression limits by the end of this dive. The forecast called for increasing winds in the afternoon so we pulled up our anchor and cruised back to Monterey. We saw some Humpbacks on the way. We anchored in 35 ft of water off Otter Cove, Pacific Grove. Normally you would have great difficulty getting a boat to where we anchored, but, sadly there were only a very few scattered fronds of Giant Kelp instead of the usual, many, many, acre, dense forest of kelp you would find here. We drank some hot chocolate to reinforce our courage and made a second dive. We only had around 15 ft of horizontal visibility for this dive. Greg found and I managed to also see, surprisingly at this heavily hunted location, one of the three largest lingcod we've ever encountered. We saw a few sea stars but still, and now it has been about four years, not a single Sunflower Star, a major predator common in this area in the past. I'm afraid it is locally extinct.
A healthy spiny sea star, encouraging to see.
Kelp Rockfish
Kelp Rockfish
Acorn Barnacle, buried in Strawberry Anemones, can be seen feeding with his extended legs at the top of the picture. For a few more shots from this dive, please go to:
https://goo.gl/photos/D5fwqLTqNwDw3WuCA
