Clinton's Dive Log (Continued...) |
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Current Reports Aged Reports Older Reports More Older Reports Even More Older Reports Yet More Older Reports 08/02/03 07/26/03 Something funny was going on with the water today as we passed through alternate patches of green murk and clear blue water. Unfortunately on a day when we wanted to go south it seemed to get greener the further we went. Being hard headed we decided to dive Soberanes Point anyway and hope it was just a surface layer. No such luck; 15 foot vis to at least 100 feet. Due to the south wind we needed to anchor a bit southeast of where the really nice wall is. Ian and I found it after about 10-15 minutes of searching and had a very nice dive despite the low vis. At one point I found a large sculpin with a nearly equally large shrimp in its mouth. As I pointed it out to Ian I startled the Sculpin and the shrimp got away. I'm not sure if I owe the sculpin dinner or if the shrimp owes me something. Coming back towards the boat we missed the anchor line in the murk and came up on some kelp. Unfortunately as we passed 40 feet the kelp abruptly made a 90 degree turn as we moved up into a surface current. We shot a bag which I'm told started off being fairly close to the boat but by the time we finished our stops we found ourselves a rather disheartening distance from the Escapade. Oh well, I needed the exercise anyway! :-/ Leaving the site we found a small school of Risso's dolphins which was yet another nice topside diversion from the diving. We got a report from the Express that the vis was much better near Cypress Point so we headed up to the Fanshell Beach pinnacles for number two. Turns out the water couldn't have been more different from the first dive; clear blue with a few jellies but none of the chunky stuff from Soberanes. Call it 40-50 feet or more at depth. The anchor was sitting right next to a nice little swim-through. From there Ian and I headed north to the edge of the pinnacle and then worked our way out to the west edge and back. In addition to some pretty good Corynactis cover and some occasional hydrocoral the reef was covered with big acorn barnacles and Haliclona sponges of various colors. It kind of reminded me of diving in BC. This was reinforced when we found a nice wolf eel sitting out in the open. We spent maybe 5 minutes or more hanging out with the eel before heading back to the boat. On the way back in we stopped in the bay to spend some more time with the blue whales. Truly incredible animals. 07/19/03 07/16/03
7/13 East Pinnacle Ridge 06/14/03 Doing our deco we noticed the boat was really pitching up and down. Sure enough it was howling when we got back on the surface. Time to head back to the bay. Dive 2 was at Ballbuster. It was a bit murky at the surface here but at about 60 feet or so it cleared right up. Below that it was 30-40 feet. Sami and I made the mistake of reeling off to the west to visit some sister rocks. Reeling in a current is a pain and I managed to birdsnest the reel. Hilarity ensued and it took 10 minutes to straighten things out. Oh well. We headed back for the pinnacle and got a few minutes enjoying the scenerey and found a big wolf eel right as we were calling the dive. Having done nearly an hour of deco on the first two dives we decided to sit the third one out, especially as it was Aumentos which is OK but hardly a must dive. The others reported vis in the 10-15 foot range. 06/07/03 The water in the bay looked pretty green but it cleared right up shortly after we rounded Point Pinos. We decided to try the diving near Cypress Point. The original plan was Local's Ledge but Phil did a bit of exploring with the depth sounder and put us on a different ridge a bit west of there. Chuck came by and said it was near a spot he calls Black Dog Ridge. Anyway it was a great dive which featured a rather sheer wall from 60 to 120 feet. Vis near the surface was a jelly filled 20 feet but it opened up nicely to over 40 feet below that. The ridge was covered with some of the nicest hydrocoral I've ever seen. There was also a pretty good sized school of blue rockfish over the top of the pinnacle. Phil reported that a large school of porpoise had visited the boat while we were underwater but we didn't see them. We kept going south and did our second dive at Soberanes Point. Vis there was a bit less than at Cypress Point; call it 15-30 depending on the depth. Gordon and I had to swim a bit from the anchor before it got really good but soon enough we found a nice wall with Corynactis, Metridiums and a bit of hydrocoral. Best of all I found a mosshead warbonnet which actually wanted its picture taken! Usually these very pretty little fish are very shy. This one stayed out and about until Gordon (almost literally) had to drag me kicking and screaming back to the boat. As a result we ended up having to do a lot of deco. This was more than OK though as we found ourselves in a shallow Neriocystis kelp forest surrounded by blue rockfish. The third dive was back up at the Carmel Pinnacles. Vis there was about in the middle between the other two sites. We got a quick visit from a harbor seal and Gordon also got a brief look at what he thinks was an electric ray. Pretty darn nice day on the water. 05/24/03 05/17/03 So despite the risk of making everybody else mad at me I will report that I a great dive on Saturday! I was diving with Gordon Robinson, John Heimann and Isaac Callicrate at the Mile Bouy off of the Escapade. It didn't seem like a good idea, but what the heck we were already in Monterey so why not get wet? A strong north wind was making things really choppy and the surface water was thick and green; miso soup with live prawns or something like that. On the way down Gordon and I were convinced it was going to be a miserable dive. Vis was no more than 5 feet. At about 60 feet the color of the water started to change from green to black. After a bit I noticed that I could see Isaac and John below us. Better yet I could see the metridiums below them! Cool! Literally. The temperature at the bottom was 46F - literally 10 degrees cooler than the surface murk. It was also clear - at least 60 feet, maybe more. Seriously. At various points our two teams were easily 100 feet apart and we could still track each other with our lights. Anyway the last thing Jim told me before we descended was to check the anchor to make sure we'd be able to retrieve it. Sure enough it was wedged in a crack. After a short struggle I freed it only to realize that there wasn't much scope in the anchor line. 2 quick bounces later and it was well and truly gone. Oh well, free ascent for us today! No worries. We got a good 25 minutes of bottom time admiring a big school of blue rockfish. There were also a number of large vermilions, some starry rockfish and several very large lings. We also saw several spanish shawls, some squid eggs and, of course, the usual suspects here; metridiums, gorgonians and some nice sponges. Deco was uneventful and even though the vis sucked the surface water was warm which made it comfortable. As we didn't bring enough gas to do a second 140 foot dive and it seemed unlikely from the reports we'd gotten that anything else would be worth diving we called it a day. Not bad given the conditions! 05/15/03 We geared up while watching the eclipse and then went for a dive. Vis was a mediocre 8-10 feet but tolerable at least. Right when we dropped down we were treated to a large school of Mexican Shad which seemed to be mesmerized by our lights. Later we found several very large (8" or more) Plainfin Midshipman. Near the end of the dive we found a crevice that had a large number of small Red Abalone. Surge was mild in the cove where it was protected by the point and moderate outside of there. 05/11/03 05/10/03 Dive two was at Outer Butterfly house. Vis wasn't quite as nice here but it was still a nice dive with lots of the usual suspects; Hydrocoral, Blue Rockfish, Corynactis, etc. 05/03/03 The Express was sitting on Aumentos which was our first choice for the second dive so we settled on Eric's. During our surface interval we observed a couple of fellow boaters as they made a sharp high-speed turn which resulted in a snap roll which, in turn, resulted in them being ejected from their boat! Doh! We motored over and fished them out. Fortuantly they were OK. Be careful out there. The dive at Eric's was unremarkable but pleasant with good vis and hardly any surge. We did see a rather large Flabellina iodinea before heading up and making some very lame attempts at blowing bubble rings during our deco. 04/24/03 Sunday we started at Breakwater with lots of stage passing and ascent/descent drills. Conditions were actually pretty nice but we were too busy practicing to notice. We looked good with one stage but it got a bit ugly the more we added. At 3 we really started to struggle just a bit and I even managed to drop a bottle while floundering around which was embarrassing. I also found that over 2 hours of drills in one dive can be quite tiring... Of course that was only the start and we finished the day in lecture, watching the video of ourselves and picking up tips on handling stages and gear rigging. Monday we moved out into deeper water, now diving off of Capt Phil's RIB which we had booked for the rest of the week. We started improving some but the results were still mixed, right down to me dropping a stage - this time in 70 feet of water. Doh! Visibility Monday at Hopkins varied dramatically - anywhere from 10 to 40 feet depending on depth. It was murky near the surface and there was also a current. Naturally AG had us doing drills at 20 feet. Keeping track of the anchor line in bad vis and a current while task loaded proved to be difficult but we started consolidating our skills a bit on the second dive. Time for some lectures on deco theory and gas management. Tuesday we started doing some real dives, this time at the Mile Buoy. We started by clipping the stage bottles to the boat lines. After Susan splashed she went to the line with her bottles and asked "Hey Andrew, where is my bottom mix?" Doh! Of course now we're in 140 feet of water. Apparently one of the bolt snaps had come unclipped from the line. Filled with 21/35 the stage wasn't quite positively buoyant and had sunk out of sight. Susan took AG's bottom stage and we spent the dive looking for the stage while AG watched us from above using back gas. At some point with his bird's eye (fish's eye?) view he spotted the stage and retrieved it. Whew. Vis was maybe 30-40 feet and surface conditions were relatively flat given a prevailing west swell with south winds. The second dive on Tuesday proved to be excellent and Susan and I were starting to feel more confident. Among other things we saw 3 wolf eels, a Doriopsilla spaldingi nudibranch and a very large halibut. The deep stops on the Deco featured a big school of blue rockfish and we didn't look too comical with the 3 stages. Wednesday we did a big dive outside of Point Lobos. The plan was to dive a spot called Deep E3 which is a pinnacle where the top is at 140 and the bottom at around 200. I think we missed it by one rock as the bottom was "only" 190 feet but it was still a very pretty dive. The deep pinnacles outside of Lobos are so beautiful as to be nearly indescribable. Dense corynactis, huge sponges, gorgonians, the works. Amazing. We had a couple of misadventures with the stages but dealt with them straight away and we also ran our deco a bit longer than planned but overall it was a pretty smooth dive. Vis was easily 50 feet. Today we were back at Lobos looking for an even deeper dive. Surface conditions sucked with rain, wind and lots of chop but the water still looked very clear. The plan was for 240 but when we got to the bottom it was more like 220. There were some low-profile rocks but nothing like a big pinnacle - at least not at first. The small rocks were interesting nonetheless with crinoids, huge vase sponges, and a Grunt Sculpin which was a new fish for me for this area. Eventually AG got frustrated as Susan and I kept our heads down carefully examining the small rocks and he pointed out the big pinnacle at the edge of our visibility. This, we think, was the Deep E3 pinnacle we had wanted to dive yesterday and it provided an insanely pretty backdrop for our deep deco stops. Susan and I fubared the 70 foot stop a bit which was a drag given that this was the last day of the class and it would have been nice to finish on a strong high. Oh well, still a heckuva nice dive and a fun (if rather exhausting class). Time for some sleep, 04/13/03 Sue and I were in the water first. The water was a bit murky at the surface but as we descended it opened up a bit to maybe 30 feet at depth. It was quite dark but otherwise quite scenic. We found 2 Tritonia diomedea nudibranchs out on the sand and also saw quite a few other interesting branchs including Flabellina iodinea, Tritonia festiva and several very large Triopha catalinae. Also of interest were a large sheep crab with gorgonians growing on it, several big lingcod and 3 wolf eels including a big old male that had to be at least 6 feet long. Deco was straightforward though the current was just strong enough to be annoying and the large amount of boat traffic kept us from leaving the anchor line and just shooting a bag. Susan I and also did a practice dive later at Hopkins deep reef. We didn't see much, but weren't looking either. Vis there was about 20 feet. 04/09/03 We started out by getting various topside shots and interviews about diving and marine reserves in the harbor, Pescadero Point, Stillwater Cove, Point Lobos, etc. We had especially good cooperation from the local marine life at Stillwater where a small Humpback Whale several times interrupted the interviews by fluking right near the boat. We then motored down to Lobos rocks for a dive. Doug the host decided not to get in as he's been out of the water for a couple of years but JT, Pat, Alan and I did get in a dive, and what a dive it was! Amazing vis and literally hundreds of sea lions playing with us. JT, Alan and I all got some great video. After that we decided to head back to a more protected area as Jack the cameraman and Eunice the producer were getting rather seasick. We motored back up to Pescadero Point and took Doug for a dive at Fire Rock. He was a bit rusty but conditions were good and Doug seemed quite pleased with his dive. Overall it was an incredibly nice day on the ocean. Hopefully it will result in a good show which helps a broader audience to appreciate the wonders of the undersea environment along the Big Sur coast. I'll be sure to give you guys some advance notice about when the show airs. Also I wanted to thank Jim Capwell on the Escapade for helping to arrange all of this. Thanks Jim! 04/06/03 04/05/03 03/31/03 03/29/03 Topside conditions were great, with sunshine, warm t-shirt weather, mild winds, practically no wind waves and moderate swells. The ocean color was horrible, looking down from the deck of the boat the water looked like the coffee in our office pot, watery gray-brown muck :-( Luckily the muck was just a top layer and at depth there was clear water and good diving! 1st dive: 'Old Lunaticos' at Outer Outer Pinnacles. This area has the tops around 80'-90', and sand channels between 140' - 170', very very pretty. Vis near the surface was less than10' of hazy green, and temperature was about 52 degrees. As we descended past 60' the visibility kept improving, and the water got way colder. Vis opened to 50'+ at depth, and temperature dropped to 46 degrees; you could really feel the difference on the lips (but with my weenie warm double-Thinsulate-argon-drysuit-with-drygloves stayed toasty otherwise). Saw wolf eels, starry rockfish, Hermissenda nudibranchs, tons of gorgonians, hydrocoral, etc. A very pretty dive, this area at 140'-150' depths is great with lots of color and life, and no surge at this depth. 2nd dive: Que Paso Pinnacle on the Sur coast. The shallow spot of this area is around 50', but most of our dive we swam wrapping around from North to South on the walls around 80'-120'. The surface conditions prevailed, but now there was also a bit of a current on the top layer of water. There was still a big change in visibility as we descended, at depth we had 50'+ visibility and 46 degree water. Some surge was present, especially towards the top of the wall. We saw again wolf eels, and the usual Que Paso invertebrate life: metridiums, corynactis walls, some gorgonians, etc. Apparently we also swam directly by a Giant Pacific Octopus out in the open that none of our team saw (argh!), but Nick and Pete coming by the other way immediately spotted! Must have been in the blind spot. 3rd dive: Somewhere around the Pinnacles. I don't know exactly where as I didn't do this dive, because I got bent after dive 2 (told you it was an eventful day) !! I'll post some more information on this later, but no worries, I seem to be just fine right now. In one sentence: After the first and second uneventful dives with preplanned profiles, I felt some pain in my shoulder with no neurological symptoms, started breathing oxygen, pain responded to it and disappeared rapidly, I stayed on O2 for a couple of hours, and no symptoms have returned in the 6 hours after I came off oxygen. So, for me the incidence rate of Type 1 (or pain-only if you so like to classify) DCS is now 1 in 1010 dives... Please don't write to ask for more details, I'll post more when I have more time. Sami 03/22/03 03/16/03 03/08/03 The life was a bit scarce on this side of the reef so Sami suggested cutting through a crack to the south. We did so and were richly rewarded. The southwest side was more vertical and also more densely populated with marine life. We had a particularly good nudibranch dive sighting Mexichromis porterae, ,Doriopsilla spaldingi ,Flabellina trilineata ,Tritonia festiva ,Geitodoris heathi and many more. Very cool stuff. Knowing there were likely to be vase sponges here I kept my eye out and eventually found several of them below us. We briefly descended to 180 or so to get a look and some quick shots. Naturally I had forgotton the cords for my video lights so the shots had to be done with natural light but, hey, at least we can prove we saw them! I put up a slideshow featuring still frames of the rather lame images I did manage to capture. Vis was at least 80 feet on the bottom and surge was light. Overall a great dive. The second dive was at Hopkins Deep Reef. Dave flooded his suit again so it was just Sami and me and the goal for the dive was practice. We did that and also enjoyed a good show from the local Sea Lion population. Vis was nice here too; maybe 30-40 feet. 03/02/03 02/23/03 The second dive was at Outer Butterfly House. My turn to run line and we emptied the reel. I need more work on my tieoffs... The third dive was at Dali's wall and was also strictly about practice. Sami again ran line and we did descent, ascent and mask clearing drills as well. 02/16/03 02/10/03 02/08/03 and 02/09/03 02/05/03 02/02/03 The second dive was a bit of a bust. We went looking for more reef outside of Hopkins Deep Reef and thought we found something rocky on the sounder. Turned out to be a vast expanse of sand. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained! 01/29/03 While on the swim out I noticed two large Bat Rays right underneath us. I tried to get down in front of them to get some video but they were moving too fast. Oh well. We then moved down the slope to where the depth reaches 45 feet or so and turned north away from the wall. Out in the sandy area Kati found a Spotfin Sculpin. Pete found a cool Razor Clam and I finally got a halfway decent shot of a Plainfin Midshipman. Vis was about 25 to 30 feet and we also saw lots of the usual suspects such as octopus, various shimps, cusk eels, etc. Overall a nice dive which did help to improve my mood just a bit. 01/25/03 The second dive was next door at PTP. The scenery was pretty enough but the surge was nearly unbearable, even at 100 feet or more. Vis was a bit less than at Flintstones, maybe 30 feet rather than the 60+ we had there. We moved back up to the bay for the third dive and anchored at Aumentos. Vis here varied from 4-25 feet depending on whether you were in the middle of a sandstorm or not. Sami and I used the dive for training reeling out nearly 400 feet of line and doing an ascent drill with some stage swapping exercises. 01/18/03 Dive 2 was a Ballbuster. We picked up Dave at the launch ramp, swapped tanks and went for a practice dive. Vis wasn't quite as nice as in Carmel but I'll still take 40 feet anyday! Sami reeled out nearly 400 feet of line and we had a very pleasant dive featuring big schools of rockfish, 3 wolf eels, nesting Lingcod and Cabezon and more. The skills during the ascent and descent part of the dive weren't exactly spot on but at least we got some work in. 01/16/03 Insanity Files, part unknown. Clinton and John E failed the sanity test, and joined me for a midweek night dive. Conditions were excellent with no wind, clear skies with almost full moon and very little wave action. Visibility along the wall was 30'+! Temp was 55 degrees. Very very fishy today, lots of rockfish of different persuasions. Also saw sailfin sculpins, a juvenile wolfeel, a big lingcod, and the larges cabezon that I've seen in Monterey (this fish was British Columbia size!). With the dive light blocked, it was easy to see the whole scenery with fish and all in bright moonlight. This was also probably the slowest dive that I've done; I figure we averaged 0.1 mph on this 104 minute dive! Too much to see! Excellent dive, late night, sleepytime.
01/12/03 On the second dive we did a descent drill while swapping stages. During this the bolt snap from Beto's primary light broke off giving us something to do on the dive; look for the snap. We failed but did have a nice dive. Lots of Sea Lions, a Wolf Eel, several Treefish and nice vis made for a good time. 01/11/03 Swells were on the large side but it wasn't windy. We headed to Carmel and decided the South side of the Outer Pinnacles should be protected enough to allow good diving. Our hope was to swim South to the edge of the canyon and get a good deep dive in. Unfortunately we failed to adequately define the term deep for Phil and we had to swim hard to find 120 feet of water (where we might have wanted 160). Oh well, it was a nice dive anyway and we saw lots of interesting rockfish including a Starry Rockfish and had some fun with a Sea Lion as well. Vis was a nice 40 feet or so and the water a balmy 56F. The second dive was at Mono Lobo Wall as the swell was almost west enough to make that spot protected. It was a bit surgy but nothing too horrible. I got some decent footage of a small school of Yellowtail Rockfish. As I finished shooting I looked up at Sami. He was about 20 feet away near the top of a ridge. Then he wasn't. A big wave came by and pushed him up about 10 feet and over the ridge into the distance in just about 2 seconds. Amazing things these Pacific waves. We spent the ascent swapping stages and doing other skills in midwater. Dive 3 was back at the Outer Pinnacles and all about practice. A particular weakness of mine is a lack of practice running line. I'll admit it; I don't like reels and they don't like me. In a perfect world my dive buddy would run line while I worried about video but I suspect AG isn't going to see it that way for the class... Anyway I got the primary and secondary tie offs done fairly well and we headed off. I got distracted a bit as Sami was far enough behind me that I was having trouble seeing his light. Every time I turned to look back I seemed to entangle myself or otherwise screw up the line which left Sami even further behind trying to clean up the placements. Worse, while I was having no trouble accidentally tieing line to myself I was having trouble tieing line to actual rocks. Finally when a nice tie off broke off the reef rock and all Sami lost it and started laughing uncontrollably. It's never a good sign whe you suck so badly that your dive buddies do that to you; even if your dive buddy is a psychopathic egomaniac. Anyway the only way I was able to snap him out of it was to hit him with an out of air. Our ascent from the dive sucked equally badly as the stage swapping and mask clearing drills in mid water resulted in significantly more bouynacy changes than we're going to be allowed in the class. Back at it again tomorrow. Hopefully I'll suck less. 01/04/03 It was nice topside with a slight south wind and mostly sunny skies. Unfortunately there was a big, long period NW swell. For the first dive we decided our best bet would be to stay in the bay and we did the outer edge of Aumentos. Vis was nice at the surface at maybe 40 feet but it was stirred up to more like 15 on the bottom with quite a bit of surge. 5 minutes into the dive Jim signaled me and showed me his new camera which clearly had quite a bit of water in it. We thumbed the dive and quickly as we could got the Camera back to Erik on the boat. He did the best he could to quickly rinse and dry the camera but by then it was too late. Knowing there was nothing else we could do we went back down and finished our dive. About the only thing that was remarkable was the distinct lack of nudibranchs! I figure the big swells we've had must have washed many of them away. My normal over-under for nudibranch species on one dive is about 8 and today I only saw a total of 3 slugs on 2 dives. :-( For the second dive Sami piped up and said "If we're going to get abused by the surge we should at least do it at a better dive site!" so we headed to Carmel. It was the first time any of us could remember doing dives in that order; Monterey first, then Carmel. Anyway Outer Pinnacles it was and despite some skepticism on my part it turned out to be a very nice dive. The south edge of the site was protected by the swell and vis was easily 50 feet or more with very blue water. A sea lion cruised by early in the dive and we were enjoying the scenery when something caught my eye. "Why does that cabezon have an abalone shell stuck to its face?" Turns out it was eating the ab, which is something I'd never seen before. Naturally I didn't have a camera either but it was cool to see. Overall except for Jim's camera it was a pretty nice day out on the water. We also saw several whales, though from a distance. 01/01/03 12/07/02 The Cypress Sea was just getting their divers out of the water and reported pretty good conditions there. At the same time their thinking was that Outer Pinnacles was about the only place in Carmel you could say that about. We anchored there right after they pulled out and did our dive. Visibility was a spectacular blue 70 feet or more. Despite the surge this proved to be perfect for our purposes and we got lots of good diver shots. A moderate surface current turned out to be problem for several of the other divers on the boat and we decided to try something mellower for the second dive. Accordingly we motored back up to the Bay and dropped the hook at Hopkins Deep Reef. Vis here was nice too, though the water was more green than blue. I'll call the vis 35-40 feet and the surge was vastly reduced compared to the Carmel side. We got some good anemone shots and then moved under the boat to get shots of divers decompressing with the boat in the background. Overall not a bad day of diving. 12/03/02 11/23/02 Oh, it was a nice dive besides that. Vis was about 30 feet and it was calm enough at 160 feet. The bottom was carpeted with gorgoninans, particularly at the northward most part of the dive. We also saw nearly a dozen starry rockfish, lots of rosy rockfish and a juvenile yelloweye rockfish. Good stuff, though it was quite surgy in the shallower areas until we cleared the pinnacle on our deco. The second dive was at Honeymoon, which was a bit more protected. Vis was maybe 25 feet and Beto and I had a nice dive swimming along the base of the pinnacle. We found a nice gorgonian with 2 simnia, 2 shrimp and lots of the cool barnacles that live inside the gorgonians. We also saw a small octo and several large vermilion rockfish. Sami joined us for the third dive at Outer Pinnacles as Kati was tiring of the surge. He led us on quite a tour of the Eastern side of the pinnacle. I'll admit to being rather lost. Can't let that happen to me again much if I'm going to survive Tech2! Anyway vis was rather better on this dive; maybe 40 feet. Other than a small Lingcod that had obviously lost a fight with a much larger animal (amazing it was still alive) we didn't see much unusual but it was very scenic. All in all a very nice day of diving. 11/16/02 The second dive was at Lingcod Reef which seemed to be about the only reasonably protected place we could find. Unlike Outer Pinnacles there weren't many fish in the water column so Sami and I decided to practice running line instead. Kati sat it out as her ears were bothering her. Hopefully things will settle down a bit for next weekend's Extreme Charter on the Cypress Sea. 11/09/02 - 11/12/02 Saturday pretty much sucked. Just getting in and out at the breakwater was quite tricky. Vis at the surface was actually OK; maybe 10-15 feet. Near the bottom it was more like 3-5 and very, very surgy. Sunday was a bit better but waves were still sloshing up the first few steps at breakwater. Again vis at the surface was OK but it was really stirred up on the bottom. Monday we were on the Escapade and dove at Hopkins Deep Reef. Conditions were clearly changing for the better. There was still a bit of a swell; maybe 10 feet at 14 seconds but nothing too horrible. Vis in the surface waters was rather good; maybe 25 feet. At the bottom it was more like 10 feet and a bit surgy but not really so bad; certainly not for our purposes! :-) Yesterday actually featured great diving. We were on the Escapade again. It was flat (6 feet or so at 13 seconds) and sunny so we headed south to Carmel (BTW a nice feature of the Escapade is that it is really, really fast...) Vis at Outer Pinnacles was at least 40 feet with very little surge. We were focused on drills and training but still had a really good time. Highlights included several playful sea lions, big schools of blue rockfish and a mola swimming around the boat. Very nice diving and it looks like it might be holding up. I'd be thinking about going diving this weekend... 11/04/02 Insanity Files, Ongoing... Today at work in between meetings I made the mistake of checking the Monterey tactical weather. Problem: It looked like this night would be excellent and flat, by Wednesday the surf's going to be big, and by weekend both NOAA and Navy think it'll be spectacularly huge (SWELL W 20 TO 25 FT on NOAA forecast for Sat)! Analysis: We'd better go diving today! Solution: A couple of minutes later the usual suspects are rounded up and in full agreement. Sweet! ;-) Kati, Clinton and I got to South Monastery at 7pm, and it was very flat, we could not hear the surf from the berm, as there was none. Water looked crystal clear as we got in, we could see the bottom all the way out as we swam to the kelp's edge, I saw a Thornback ray amble along the bottom from 25' above! The dive itself was by now familiar non-stop harbor seal killing machine show! Kati got whacked in the head by a seal, twice!! On both times she never saw the seal coming, but I did. Heh hee! The first seal was chasing a rockfish, came from below and behind her and whacked her in the face, knocking the reg out! She seemed more annoyed at the seal than startled by it, pretty cool customer :-) A half an hour later, she was feeding an anemonie with her HID light (the krill congregates around the light, and if you put it next to an anemonie, they get a fat meal and get all excited). She had about a foot between her head and the rock wall. A seal (could have been the same individual, similar coloration) comes flying in, again unbeknownst to her, jams in between her head and the rock in attempt to grab a rockfish in a crevice in front of her! Hee hee! I'm laughing so hard I'm flooding my mask! :-) We spent a good half hour on the sand, slowly heading back to the beach with a group of seals tagging us, cruising the sand in our lights, picking up small sardines and anchovies. At one point I'm hovering 10 feet above Clinton and Kati, who are looking away from each other, with five seals twirling in between them! Incredible! We finally came up when it was shallow enough to basically stand up. That tells you how much surf there was: none. An excellent dive! Visibility was at least 30', perhaps more over the sand flats. Lowest temp was 52 degrees, and we ended up with a 90 minute dive time at max depth of 34', leaving 800-1200 psi in our singles. Should have stayed for another hour! :-) Sleepytime. Sami 11/03/02 Back at the ramp it seemed that Sami and I were the only ones who didn't see any Leopard Sharks. For the second dive I teamed up with Kati and Patty Harris. Within a few minutes we found several of the pretty sharks and I spent most of the dive trying to get film of them. I wasn't entirely successful but I did get a few sequences that aren't too bad. There were dramatic tides today and the second dive was near the end of the outgoing flow and the vis was reduced somewhat but still in the 20 foot range. Overall a very nice day of diving. 10/31/02 We finally got in just before 9:00. The waves didn't look too bad but the water was stirred up something awful. When we descended vis was in the 3 foot range. No lie, you literally couldn't see a 10 watt HID pointed right at you from more than 3 or 4 feet way. Ick. Being stubborn we pressed on and found the pipe. After a bit it cleared up to around 10 feet which we decided was acceptable. Once into deeper water the dive was quite pleasant and among other things we saw quite a few squid. There must have been a Mola Frisbee qualifying event among the Sea Lions as there were lots of finless molas in various states of dying, death and decomposition. Is there anything more pitiful than a mola trying to swim with no fins? On the way back we ran into a Bat Ray, or should I say it ran into us! We were swimming 3 abreast which was the only way we could keep track of each other. (The purpose of this was to swim under the kelp, not for fun at that point). Anway I was on the right when suddenly something smacked me in the head. Startled, I looked around for a second before I realized that I was looking right at a large bat ray passing in front of us. Pretty cool way to end a dive! 10/27/02 For our second dive we explored the east side of Whaler's working our way back out to Granite Point, sort of the reverse of our first dive. Vis ranged from 10 to 25 feet with considerable surge. At the beginning of the Granite Point wall we found a bit of protection from the surge and had a good time admiring the collection of very large vermilion and copper rockfish which live here. Overall not a bad day of diving considering the swell. 10/26/02 After a quick debrief (the video session will come later) we headed off to Phil Sammet's birthday party which proved to be a good time. All except for the part about the Giants. Oh well. 10/20/02 Did a deeper dive today with Clinton off Capt Phil's RIB. There was considerable NW swell at long interval, but the wind waves were pretty mild. We figured it would make easy topside conditions, but the surge would reach deep. Looking at the pretty topside weather and offshore wind from the Carmel Valley, we decided to try our plan, and motored over sloppy seas to the Outer Outer Outer Pinnacles. We launched at Lobos at 9:15am after a rapid start, and headed down the line at 10am sharp. There was a bit greenish hazy layer of about 20' visibility on the top with just a touch of current, but we broke out of the haze at around 100' and below that the visibility was much better, about 50'-60' and no current, temp at depth was 50 degrees. The topography of this area is very pretty and dramatic, and the life is very different from the main Carmel Pinnacles and Outer Pinnacles. The peaks have fairly vertical walls with some ledges and sloping surfaces, but they're mostly quite sheer. Great vis made for great scenery, we could see towering 60' tall pinnacles split with sand channels, and hopped from one to the next. Around the shallow spots at 140' corynactis covers every surface along with barnacles and encrusting red sponges. Down the walls to 150'-170' there are lots of elephant-ear sponges, as well as small bunches of red gorgonians (these were heavily prayed upon with most polyps gone, Clinton might remember the predator, too). Heading south a bit deeper the walls have vase sponges, as other life starts tapering off. We were nudibranch-hunting, but didn't find what we looked for, so the camera stayed clipped off on this one. Very beautiful dive, with just a bit of surge along the east side of the walls, and quite noticable surge around the pinnacle tops at 140'. We had planned a current drift deco with a bag marker, but as no current came up during the dive, we followed plan B and did our deco hovering in the vicinity of the anchor line looking at small pelagic invertebrates. Now, I saw several comb jellies that I thought were Sea Gooseberries (Pleurobrachia bachei), but looking at the Wrobel book (Wrobel, Mills: Pacific Coast Pelagic Invertebrates) the body shape is wrong. What I saw matches the description of Hormiphora californensis but the range of that doesn't extend to Monterey. This makes me think we might have seen the "Hormiphora undescribed species" (plate 102, page 61) or the "undescribed species of mertensiid" (plate 108, page 63)?! Has anyone else seen these? Sorry, no picture (wrong size framer in film camera). Sami 10/19/02 For the second dive we moved back up to the East Pinnacle. Vis here was slightly reduced from the first dive to maybe 30 feet but it was still pretty nice. Again, we spent the dive in the canopy playing with the Sea Lions and admiring the rockfish. Good day of diving and the ride back was surprisingly smooth. 10/17/02 10/13/02 For the second dive we headed back north the the East Pinnacle. Vis here was a bit better and on our descent we were quickly surrounded by a truly amazing school of Blue Rockfish. Naturally Kati and I stayed with the school and took lots of photos and video. After a bit we moved along the wall and found a nice patch of Hydrocoral and finished up the dive taking pictures there. Overall a nice day on the water. 10/10/02 Dive 2 was closer in to shore in Blue Fish Cove. We swam back out in the general direction of the Great Pinnacle. There is some nice topography in this area and we were shadowed for the entire dive by a large Sheephead. Overall a pretty nice dive. 10/6/02 The second dive was the Ruby E. We agreed we liked this wreck better than the Yukon as it is positively covered with Corynactis and Red Gorgonians. It's very pretty. I also saw several interesting nudibrachs including Laila cockerelli, Tritonia festiva and Flabellina iodinea. The third dive was in the Point Loma Kelp beds. This was a very nice dive. Not particularly coloful but very fishy with a nice kelp canopy. Sami took some nice pictures of the trip and you can see them here. 9/29/02 First dive was on 30/30 and we stayed fairly shallow motoring out to about 110. Vis inside the cove was pretty mediocre ranging from 5 feet the ramp to about 25 feet at the end of the middle reef. Outside of the cove it opened up to 35-40 feet. We had an excellent dive with several memorable moments. Twice we had a cormorant "fly" by chasing YOY blue rockfish. Once it stopped right in front of us and kind of hovered for several seconds (it seemed like more). Later Beto found a juvenile basket star sitting on a gorgonian. Despite the fact that it was only about 1cm across there was no question as to what it was. I've never seen one before in Monterey waters. Finally on the way back we were graced by squadron of 4 Mola molas. Very cool stuff. On the second dive we switched to 21/35 and continued our exploration out into deeper waters, this time to a depth of about 145 feet. The reef here is nice but not as dramatic as the areas further west. There were lots of very large gorgonians and one or two spots with good coverage of encrusting life. Fish life was quite dense. Vis seemed a bit down from the first dive but that may have been the angle of the sun more than any change in the water. Finally we saw a calico bass on the way back in which is unusual this far north. 9/24/02 9/21/02 and 9/22/02 9/18/02 9/8/02 9/7/02 One interesting thing about the night's action was the failure of Sami's primary light. It struck fine but spontaneously turned off on the swim out. He was able to re-strike it a couple of times but it would then quickly turn off again. We later decided it was probably the cord though it might also be the ballast. Anyway since I was planning on shooting video we swapped primary lights so that Sami would have a working one. Score one for the unified team and note that this wouldn't have been possible if we'd had primary lights that weren't easily removable (such as ones bolted to the backplate). 9/4/02 9/2/02 On the second dive we swam further out and the vis was quite a bit better; maybe 35 feet but much more blue and pleasant. The highlight for me was finding a small gunnel living in a lacy bryozoan. I still can't ID it but it might have been a juvenile penpoint gunnel. It's body was pink but it's head was white and it had a black mark just behind it's rather large pectoral fin. I didn't get a picture as it was too far back into the bryozoan. 8/31/02 Our second dive was at a spot called Malcontent which is just south of Malpaso Creek near Que Paso Pinnacle. This spot featured lots of nice sand canyons and sand channels. The encrusting life wasn't as dense here but near the end of the dive Dave and I found a nice wall with Metridiums and hydrocoral. This time we found the anchor and spent our deco hanging in the bull kelp with Sami and Kati and a nice school of rockfish. There was enough swell to make the more shallow locations south of Lobos sketchy so we headed north to the Outer Pinnacles for the third dive. Vis here was a bit reduced to maybe 25 or 30 feet but it was still pleasant. Dave and I swam around for a while admiring the hydrocoral and then spent some time up in the canopy where I tried to get some rockfish footage. A little more vis would have helped it seemed like many of the blue rockfish were actually hiding down in the reef for some reason. Still a very nice dive. Coming back to the bay we noticed that the surface water was full of Sea Nettles. Hopefully they'll stay long enough for me to get into the water and get some shots of them. 8/25/02 Both dives covered the same area; the east end of Whaler's Cove near Coal Chute Point. Vis was incredible at the outer end of the cove; at least 80 feet. The swell was pretty minimal at around 4-5 feet and winds were calm. It was rather cloudy making the kelp forest quite dark but otherwise conditions were ideal. On the first dive I got a quick glimpse of a Calico Bass; only the third time I've ever seen one in Monterey. We also saw lots of the usual rockfish and lingcod suspects and had a great time playing with a harbor seal on the second dive. 8/18/02 Once on the water I didn't feel that bad and the conditions were perfect; maybe a 4 foot swell, no wind and partly cloudy skies. We left the dock at 6:00 AM and didn't reach our first dive spot at Partington Cove until about 9:15. Partinton features a submarine canyon that runs right up to the steep rocky shoreline. No more than 100 yards offshore the sounder was reading over 500 feet! Yikes! As I was worried about my ability to equalize I passed on David and Sami's deep diving plan and buddied up with Nick Radov and Gary Banta. Surprisingly my ears did fine and we had a nice dive. We never quite found the steep dropoff (which didn't really get steep until about 130 feet) but vis was around 100 feet and the kelp forest was filled with large numbers of rockfish of every description. We saw kelp, black, blue, vermilion, rosy and yellowtail rockfish along with several treefish. In places there were large schools of small juvenile rockfish. Higher up in the kelp were schools of senioritafish. Truly a nice dive. For the second dive I joined Dave and Sami for a deep dive. We ran down to where the wall started at about 160 feet and followed it along as the top climbed gradually to about 130 feet. The wall itself wasn't spectacular in terms of encrusting life but it wasn't bare either and it dropped straight down into the inky abyss which was quite a sight in the excellent visibility. On our way up we saw 3 mola molas including one which had been severely chewed upon by the resident sea lions. A sea lion swam right by it and for a moment I thought I was going to get some good footage of a game of "mola frisbee" but the sea lion just swam on past. Oh well. We finished our deco in the dense kelp forest surrounded by blue rockfish. For the third dive Phil found a pinnacle in the middle of nowhere offshore of the Post Ranch. The bottom was a uniform 100 feet and sand when out of nowhere came a pinnacle up to 35 feet. Sounder readings looked like this during a slow pass: 100, 100, 100, 35, 100... After a debate over whether the pinnacle was big enough to splash on common sense prevailed and we gave it a look. Good decision; as expected it was an amazing spire rising straight up, even undercut in places. The rock was covered with fairly dense corynactis, bryozonans and sponges. Sami, Dave and I found 2 wolf eels in the cracks and I also saw a wayward zebrastripe goby. Unfortunately the latter was a bit camera shy. Pretty damn nice day of diving all in all. I'm paying for it as I write this the next day but it was clearly worth it. 8/11/02 8/10/02 Our second dive was at Fire Rock. Where the day had started off sunny it was now socked in with fog. We hoped to find more sun at the north end of the bay. No joy but we decided to go for some shallow kelp shots anyway. There were quite a few salps and moon jellies in the water and eventually Sami got some nice shots of me posing with them. We never got deeper than about 10 feet but it was still nearly a 30 minute dive! Vis at the surface was about 20-25 feet and greenish. 8/9/02 8/4/02 Dive 2 was at Lingcod Reef. Vis was excellent here too, though dark in some places due to the amazingly thick kelp canopy. We got a brief visit from a harbor seal and also saw a mosshead warbonnet and a sixspot prickleback. The third dive was also at Ling Reef but closer to Pescadero Point than the first. This spot wasn't quite as pretty but was still a nice dive. Vis was slightly less here, maybe 25-30 feet. By the time we got out the wind had kicked up and there was a bit of chop on the ride home. Nothing serious but I'm spoiled now by the flat waters on the inside passages up north. 7/29/02 7/09/02 07/07/02 Following a long surface interval Sami and I did a night dive at Monastery. The seals were there as usual but my video lights didn't cooperate. Grrr. think now I've broken the wet-plug connector on the left pod. Berkley was kind enough to set me up with a loaner in case I can't get it fixed by Friday for the Alaska trip. Thanks Berk! 07/04/02 07/03/02 06/29/02 The second dive was at Honeymoon Rocks. As I was slipping into the harness I caught my wrist on the goodman handle for my primary light. Naturally it tore a hole in the wrist seal. Grrr. Paulo made a quick repair with duct tape which allowed me to do the dive but I'm facing yet another rush order with Diving Concepts to get the suit fixed for my upcoming trip to Alaska. The dive itself was nice with 40'+ vis and the usual scenery at Honeymoon. 06/22/02 - 06/23/02 06/16/02 A grand day out! Cracking diving! Ian, Dave, Susan, Beto, Clinton and I had reservations. Ian had a boat, and everybody but me and Clinton had scooters. Between us I think we had 10 sets of doubles and 14 stage bottles. The only thing we didn't have, but sorely needed, was load leveling for the cars! ;-) 1st dive: Campbells. This is a mid-size pinnacle west of Bluefish Cove and near E3, just outside of the park boundary. We just named it, as it was red, small and the shape of a soupcan :-) The top is at 130' and sand at 165', and it's covered in corynactis, some hydrocoral, plenty of sponges, lot of gorgonians and nice bryozoans, schools of juvenile rockfish. Also saw a Dirona albolineata the size of a rat! Good addition to target list. Vis was fantastic, we could see the bottom at 165' from 60', call it a real 100' vis at depth. Temp was 48 degrees. An unusual thing happened on the way up at our 7th deco stop at 50'. All of a sudden, PFOOOSSSSHH, my face was covered in a cloud of bubbles. I look at my clipped off primary reg, it's fine; look at the necklace, it's fine; I'm breathing the stage, which is fine... Just a couple of seconds has passed as Clinton reaches over and unhooks my drysuit inflator. Pop. Bubbles stop. Hovering in front of me, he could see the gas coming out AROUND the button, and saved me a couple of hundred psi of argon. Back on land I pull the inflator apart and find nothing. O-rings are clean and accounted for, and after putting it back together it works fine. Go figure! 2nd dive: Great Pinnacle of Bluefish. After a looong interval in the sun, we got another nice one in. This is a great scenery dive with less dense life, swam along for a good distance. Vis was fairly poor near the surface, but opened up greatly at depth to 80'+. Didn't see anything unusual, nice dive with passing clouds adding mood shifts. Temp 48. Even the cove looked OK, we could see the boat anchor from the surface about 15' away. Pictures from the first dive can be found here:http://homepage.mac.com/samilaine/PhotoAlbum31.html 06/15/02 As the conditions looked great we decided on South Monastery. Turned out to be a great dive. Vis ranged from 20 feet right at the beach to about 40 feet out in a bit deeper water (50 feet deep or so). Dave found a Six Spot Prickleback. Coming back I got a brief glimpse of a large Leopard Shark though it was gone by the time I signalled Dave. Capping it off we found a Thornback Ray in the shallows right before we climbed out. The water temp was about 48F. It was windy but there was hardly any swell. Few if any actual waves were reaching the beach at Monastery. After Dave's lectures at Manta Ray we switched venues to the Salinas Municipal Pool for some skills practice. Vis was actually better at Monastery! I'd call the vis in Salinas about 25 feet. The water was well over 80F though. From there we retired to a pizza parlor for some grub and to review the video. 06/11/02 After about 10 minutes of diving we were visited by our first seal and didn't go more than about 3 minutes after that without seeing one. I got some great video of a seal eating some rockfish. On the way back we also found a nice thornback ray. Getting out we were treated to a clear, dark sky with an amazing display of stars. Great stuff all the way around. 06/08/02 After talking with Dave a bit about his new RB80 Rebreather Susan and I geared up and headed out to the mouth of the cove. Vis seemed to improve a bit as we swam out though it was rockin and rolling at the surface. We dropped down onto the top of the middle reef and were amazed to find 30 foot vis! Excellent, this wasn't a waste of time after all! We proceeded out towards some of the pinnacles outside of Whaler's and it just got better. At our turn point it had to be over 60 feet and the surge wasn't too bad at depth (about 110 feet). Large gorgonians and sponges abounded and we saw several large Sheephead. Amazingly we even got a glimpse of a Sailfin Sculpin out and about during the day! On the swim back we found a Six Spot Prickleback. Dave and Beto went scootering while Susan and I were diving and reported excellent conditions as well. Dave wanted some footage of himself on the breather and with the scooter. After a surface interval in which I peppered him with RB80 questions he towed me out to a spot a bit past Hole in the Wall and we stopped to get some video. Vis here was maybe 40 feet and we got some really nice video. After rinsing our gear we hooked up with Sami and Kati for some Thai food where they regaled us with stories of 4 foot vis and huge waves in Monterey where the California Beach Dive Photo Competition was taking place. Due to the limited access Point Lobos was against the rules and it turned out to be the only place in Central California with decent shore diving conditions! Oh well, at least some of us had a nice day of diving! 06/04/02 Looks like we failed the insanity check twice: 1) At 7pm with the Monterey buoy reporting 8ft swells AND 8ft wind waves w/ 30 kt gusts, we decided to drive to Monterey. 2) At sunset at Breakwater with green swirling murk churning below, we decided to "go in anyway to take a look". Vis varied from 3ft (can't really see my own fins with the 10W HID light) at Breakwater wall to about 6-7ft on the sand flats and around the Barge. Temp was 52 degrees. And here's the curious part: we didn't see anything unusual or extra cool, but had an interesting and fun dive anyway. Got some good low-vis nav and team awareness practice in, too. Learned to keep the nose less than 1ft from sand to actually make out all the little night critters scurrying around in the muck! Vis back at Breakwater was pretty bad, so we cut the dive short at 69 minutes. A fun night out. Got some pics, at least I had the presence of mind to put the macro lens on the housing before getting in... http://homepage.mac.com/samilaine/PhotoAlbum30.html. Sami 06/03/02 05/26/02 As the current made the first dive a bit tricky Phil dialed it down a bit for the second dive and we splashed in at Rocky Creek. Max depth here was about 65 feet and most of the rocks were completely covered in Neriocystis and Laminaria kelp. As such it wasn't especially colorful but the dense kelp made a good "kelp forest" dive with nice schools of senoritafish, blue rockfish and kelp perch. We also saw a largish sheephead and a young harbor seal came by for a quick pass a couple of times. Two divers reported finding a giant pacific octopus under a rock. Vis was maybe 25 feet and the water a bit warmer; maybe 50F. The third dive was at Grey Zone. The structure here is pretty interesting with lots of large, undercut rocks. Encrusting life is pretty good though perhaps not as colorful as more offshore spots. I did manage to find a Laila cockerelli nudibranch. Vis was about 25 feet with 48F water. 05/22/02 05/12/02 Diving with Sami on the Cypress Sea's Extreme trip. Topside conditions were beautiful with sunny skies and very little swell. It was a tad windy with some chop but not too bad. The boat was about half full of the usual suspects so we headed south. First dive was at Flinstones. Sami and I had a great dive at around 110 and found lots of gorgonians and their attendent shrimp, barnacles and simnia snails. I also observed several Tritonia festiva nudibranchs feeding on the gorgonians. Interestingly they didn't climb out onto the branches of the gorgonian but rather kept their foot attached to the substrate and grazed only on the polyps which were within reach. I wonder if this is due to some defensive mechanism that the gorgonians use to discourage the branchs from heading out onto the branches? Vis was murky at the surface but easily 50 feet at depth. Our second dive was at Gotham, near Cypress Point. Again the vis was murky at the surface but it was spectacular at depth - I'd guess close to 100 feet! Sami and I didn't find anything particularly interesting on this dive but the scenery was amazing with lots of huge, steep pinnacles and wide sand channels. By now the wind had picked up so we headed back to Pescadero Point for the third dive. I had trouble clearing my ears on the way down and once getting there it was clear that I had some issues. I called the dive and Sami and I made a very, very slow ascent to keep my ears from exploding... I did manage to get a brief glimpse of the rather rare six spot prickleback but it darted away before Sami could point his camera at it. 05/04/02 Sami was feeling better after a nap and joined us for the second dive. We also picked up Reginald whose buddy wasn't able to go diving. He's a new diver and it was fun to show him around the reef. We basically did exactly the same dive for the second dive as with the first. Highlights included a fun harbor seal encounter at the surface during the swim out and a good number of large rockfish. 04/27/02 First dive was at Arc de Triumph with Sami. Kudos to Dave Chamberlin for bringing a GPS that had the coordinates for this site. Somehow when the Point got sold this was one of the sites that didn't make it off of that boat's GPS. Anyway it was a great dive. Vis was in the 50-60 foot range and the anchor was right next to the arch making for easy navigation. Lots of nice Hydrocoral, Gorgonians and a big school of blue rockfish. My ribs are still bothering me from last weekend and I realized why when I went to use my primary light. While I had done enough examination of it to realize the bulb was broken and to replace that I evidently had not looked at the handle. It was seriously bent. Naturally my chest hurt right about where it was clipped off (and where I had landed on it). Oh well, still a great dive. Back on the boat it was clear we were losing divers. Dave hadn't looked well before we even got on the boat and was definitely not looking good now. Sami was down for the count. He didn't recover much til we got back to the dock. As Nick Radov had been diving with Dave and I had been diving with Sami we both needed a buddy so we teamed up with Bob Leach for dive number 2. I directed Capt Dave to head to more sheltered waters in the hope of salvaging the day for the people who were sick. The second dive was, then, Outer Butterfly House. This is a damn fine backup plan and I consider it to be one of the finest dives on the coast. It didn't disappoint. Vis was a bit murky on the surface but still solidly above 50 on the bottom. There is lots of pretty hydrocoral to look at here and I found an interesting gunnel that I hadn't seen before nestled in a bryozoan. I called Bill Gomez over to look at it and he couldn't ID it either. For the third dive we headed back north and stopped at Outer Lingcod Reef. This is another underrated spot. Inner Lingod Reef is a bit dull but as you get to the outside you start to find Hydrocoral and other colorful encrusting life. The rock formations here are really interesting and there are lots of small holes and crevices for macro life. Vis was murky down to about 30 or 40 feet but below that it was a solid 40 feet. Dave C. was feeling better by now and joined Nick and Me for the dive. I found a Mosshead Warbonnet and was surprised to only find one. The small holes in the rocks are perfect habitat for them. Overall a very nice day on the water, at least for those of use who didn't get sick! 04/21/02 Anyway vis was a bit better today at around 10-15 feet. Hopefully all the students had a good time in the class and got some good information and practice. 04/20/02 04/13/02 Crosstraining continued today. I borrowed Sami's digital still camera, Kati borrowed my video camera and Sami dusted off his Nikonos. First dive was at the East Pinnacles in Carmel. Vis was around 40 feet with hardly any surge. I spent much of the dive trying (and failing) to take pictures of a snail that lives on Hydrocoral which Dave Behrens needs a photo of. Our second dive was at Pescadero Point. Vis was great here too. I found a very cooperative cabezon sitting head down on a nice wall and shot 35 exposures of him. Here are the best ones:
Cabezon 1 Digital photography is great. You can see in realtime what your mistakes are and correct them immediately. Considering this was only dive number 3 for me with a real still camera I'm pretty darn happy with the results! Dive three was at City Beach Reef. I had no idea that there was this much vertical relief here. Vis was great (maybe 50 feet or more) and the dive spot was very scenic. Sami and I used the dive to practice skills - primarly reel work. Despite this it was a very pleasant dive. 04/07/02 04/06/02 Conditions to start the day were gorgeous. Flat, glassy clam with no wind whatsoever. How often does that happen? I'd have liked to head way south but an afternoon charter limited us a bit. No biggie, first dive was at Outer Pinnacles. Vis was about 35-40 feet. Sami and I played model for Kati who was borrowing my video camera. It was very instructive for all of us. Next time we'll plan the action more carefully on the surface... :-) The second dive was at McDonalds. Kati got some good shots of Sami and Me swimming through the arches though during our de-brief we learned a few things about exposure control. (Having experts in still photography play with your video camera is a good way to learn how to use the video camera...). Sami and I also got some good practice in and generally made fools of ourselves while Kati filmed the whole thing. Video of yourself performing skills is an excellent motivator to do it better the next time! Sheesh, lots of learning experiences today. The third dive was at Stewart's Point. Not much to report on this one as we mostly were just slowly cruising the reef looking at the various macro subjects. We did see a small octopus. The ride home was most entertaining. Sometime just afternoon the wind dramatically increased from the NW going from zero to 20 knots in about half an hour. By the time we got to Cypress Point there were 5-6 foot wind waves. This really proved to be a good test of the boat after the adjustments to it's trim while it had been out of the water. We also saw a school of mixed Risso's and Pacific Whitesided Dolphins and a large Mola Mola. Nice day on the water 03/30/02 We reconvened at Gianni's to go over the images taken by the students. For the most part they did pretty well but we still had lots of advice and suggestions for them. Sami, Kati, Dave and I then decided to do a night dive. After filling tanks we headed over to North Monastery. Here's where it got a bit sketchy. Dave and Sami wanted to use scooters for the dive. I didn't and besides, we only had 2 scooters. By now Kati wasn't feeling that great and she decided to sit it out. Now the scooters really seemed to be a bad idea but I was eventually convinced that Dave would tow me out to the reef and that they would stay nearby while I shot video. We geared up and hauled the scooters down to the reef. Dave made the entrance look easy. I followed him in but Sami fell in the surf zone and it briefly looked like a real cluster until Kati pulled him back out. Falling while wearing doubles and clipped onto a scooter is not a good thing... Anyway Sami decided to call it a day at that point. Being in the water Dave and I decided to do a dive anyway. Dave drove me out to the reef and then stowed the scooter for the dive. Turned out to be fun dive. We've been doing quite a few night dives here and the Harbor Seals are starting to get used to us. Even better, the seals have learned to use our lights as targeting aids in their nightly foraging. This time one of the seals really took it to the next level and aggressively attacked anything we shined our lights on. I'm not certain what the toll was but at least 1 tubesnout and 1 blue rockfish ended up on the menu. Video was hard as the seal really silted things up when he started chasing fish but it sure made for good entertainment. 03/17/02 03/09/02 Second dive was at Lingcod reef and was a bit tamer though the vis was still at least 30 feet. There was some nice Hydrocoral right near the anchor and lots of interesting macro life. I even found another Mosshead Warbonnet. Pretty nice day of diving though the forecast doesn't look good for the coming week. 03/03/02 Dave and Beto gear up first and jump in. Sami and I follow within a few minutes. Vis is spectacular; at least 80 feet. The reef here is unbelievable. Incredible vertical relief and loads of encrusting life. The tops of the rocks are covered in Corynactis and Stelleta sponges while the bottoms have lots of gorgonians and other sponges. We see a small wolf eel and an octo but mostly it was just fun swimming around taking in the scenerey. Back at the breakwater Dave volunteers to let us play with his new scooter - after he's finished checking it out of course. I also take the opportunity to try out the balance characteristics of Dave's double LP 104s. Scooters, it turns out, are incredibly fun. So fun, in fact, that they should be illegal. Dammit Dave why did you let me play with that damn thing? It's more addicting than crack! Oh well, one more expensive thing to put on the wish list. Amusingly while in the water without a camera I manage to find a large halibut sitting in 10 feet of water. While Sami and I are looking at it Beto scooters right over the top of it without even realizing it was there. Dave has to leave at this point but Sami, Beto and I are still up for more diving. Susan is finishing up with her class and decides to join us for a night dive. She had been diving at Monastery earlier in the day and reported excellent conditions so we head back down there for the dive. North Monastery, again and once again it proves to be a nice dive. We see lots of lobsters, a couple of irish lords, a northern clingfish, an octo eating a crab and two harbor seals spent the dive shadowing us at the edge of our lights - probably eating whatever we illuminated. Doesn't get much better than this. 03/02/02 Sami and I used more air than we'd anticipated leaving us without enough gas to do a second dive. No matter, we break for lunch at Hulas, get our tanks filled and I stop by Backscatter again, this time to pay for the lens which I had been merely borrowing for the first dive. Following all that we meet up with Chuck Tribolet who has kindly offered space on his boat for a night dive. We decide to dive at Eric's Pinnacle. It's a bit surgier than expected but vis was good and we saw several interesting things including a red brotula, several octos, a sailfin scuplin and lots of nice scenery. Kati then heads home and Sami as Sami and I are planning a deep dive for tomorrow. We grab dinner with Susan and Beto and find a cheap motel so we can get a few hours of sleep. 02/25/02 02/23/02 A day on the Cypress Sea for a change w/ Clinton and Kati. We had a mixed bag of divers on board today, some green to begin with and some turning green during the day :-), but we went after the best diving anyway and indeed found it. Surface chop was moderate as was the swell (I personally rated it at 1 Barf, measured), wind was up but whitecaps in the afternoon, and sunny skies. 1st dive: Que Paso Pinnacle (offshore from Malpaso Creek south of Carmel Highlands). Very nice vis called at 50'-70'; temp 49 degrees. Surge was fairly strong at the top of the structure around 60'-80', but down the South wall it was very calm and pretty. High light level and good vis combined to a great "big" scenery even at 110'-120' range. Clinton and I took photos/video of Pleurophycus gardneri kelp for a researcher friend, or at least we think we did (we'll leave the positive ID to her, see the web link at end if you can help). 2nd dive: Gray Zone. Today it almost lived up to it's name, as the swell in this shallower area brought on a bit of a sand storm at the bottom. Vis was still fine despite the sand (20' or so), water was greenish, so we gave a close inspection to a mini-pinnacle. Turned out to be a good call, as we saw two (2) Giant Pacific Octopi on this rock! The first sighting was at a crack with broken crab shells littering the front, the octo was very small and the HID's sent it into hiding. About a minute later, I found a scaled up friend on the other side, deep inside the rock. No reaction to divers or strobes, and tickling a leg with a fingertip resulted in no reaction. High noon is naptime, I suppose. We did get some tele-macro pictures of the sucker discs the size of quarters. 3rd dive: Outer Butterfly House. Excellent vis 50'+, bit surgy on the tops at 60', little or no surge deeper in the channels, 49 degrees. This is now in my book on par with Outer Pinnacles as one of the best-looking dive sites in Carmel Bay. Great concentrations of hydrocoral, schools of rockfish, tons of sponges and anemonies and bryozoans, what's not to like! We ended up spending over an hour at depth just taking it all in. Two more small snapshot galleries are up: http://homepage.mac.com/samilaine/ Sami
02/18/02 We drove down to breakwater where it was flat calm and get into the water a bit after 8:30PM. While unloading gear from Sami's car I managed to tweak my back. I had to be helped into my drysuit but went shore diving with doubles anyway. How stupid is that? Anyway we did have a great dive. On the menu tonight were 4 octopi, 2 Tritonia diomedea nudibranchs, no less than 7 Sailfin Sculpins, a Monkeyface Eel, a Plainfin Midshipman (sorry, no pictures of the last 2) and 3 long and skinny fish I couldn't ID. Overall a very nice dive. Runtime was 100 minutes and I had a good time for sure though I'm not sure it was worth what I did to my back. Now, where did I put the #$#&$& tylenol? :-) 02/16/02 We found a nice spot with good bottom contour near the Pinos Steps spot we dove a few weeks ago. The water was exceptionally clean and we couldn't believe our good fortune as we descended onto the reef. We could easily have been diving Outer Pinnacles. The walls were densely covered in Corynactis with a smattering of hydrocoral and gorgonians. Lots of nice sponges too. A big lincod was guarding an egg mass just a few feet from the anchor and there were good numbers of blue and yellowtail rockfish as well. Our decompression was nice as well with blue water and numerous moon jellies. Vis was at least 50 feet and surge moderate. After a quick on-water snack we headed over to Tanker's reef for our second dive. Vis was, obviously, not what we had at Point Pinos. I'd call it 15 to 20 feet. Surge was very mild and there were lots of interesting things to see including several huge Red Abalone underneath the overhangs, lots of big Lingcod and a Onespot Fringehead. 02/10/02 Monastery was, in fact, completely flat. We walked right in and swam out the the reef. Vis was very nice - I'd call it 40 feet. Nesting cabezons were in evidence on almost every rock. We also saw a harbor seal. Near the end of the dive Sami evidently got bored and hit me with an out air drill. I did OK up until he handed my regulator back. At exactly that instant 2 harbor seals swam right over Kati's head framed by blue water. My attempts to re-stow gear and shoot video simultaneously were sadly inept and evidently extremely amusing too - at least to Sami. Oh well, at least I didn't install the batteries in my strobe backwards and then wonder why it didn't work! :-) Overall a very nice dive. We headed back up to Monterey to waste some time at Backscatter. In an unusual turn of events Kati suggested doing another dive and had to talk both Sami and me into it. Go figure. Turned out to be a good decision. We geared up just before the sun was starting to set and did a dusk dive at breakwater. Big thanks to whomever ran the line out to the barge, though we never actually got that far. Puzzled by it's existence and being a curious bunch we decided to follow it. After a bit we got the idea of where it might be leading but before we got to the barge we discovered that it went right over a small piece of pipe containing a Sarcastic Fringhead - always a great photo op and rather unusual up here. We also saw several mated pairs of Elbow Crabs and a Plainfin Midshipman. Both the fringehead and the midshipman were new species to me. I doubt we would have had as good a dive if we had stayed along the wall. Vis was maybe 15 feet and surge mild. Pretty nice really. 02/09/02 Conditions at Honeymoon were pretty nice if you stayed near the bottom at 100 feet or so. At that depth the surge was relatively mild. Sami spent most of the dive shooting shrimp on a gorgonian while I took pictures of Onchidoris bilamellata nudibranchs. Vis was a bit murky near the surface but easily 40-50 feet at depth. Shallower spots on the reef were quite surgy. For the second dive we did something between Outer Butterfly and Outer Copper Roof House. A very nice spot actually. Vis was very murky at the surface but excellent at depth. Sami and Kati saw several Mosshead Warbonnets though the seem to have been invisible to my eye. We also saw 2 Irish Lords and lots of very nice Hydrocoral. Third dive was at the outside of Lingcod Reef. Vis here was spectacular - every bit of 60 feet. Lots of Hydrocoral here to and more Mosshead Warbonnets. Pretty nice day on the water. So nice, in fact, that we've decide to go shore diving tomorrow. Stay tuned to this channel for further info. 02/03/02 Advanced night trip on Cypress Sea. Good conditions, vis from 20' to 50'+, some wind and wind waves on Big |
