Clinton's Dive Log

05/03/08
East Pinnacle and Lingcod Reef with Cameron and Matt http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/local/pinnaclesmacro/

04/26/08
Lobos Open Invitational diving with Matt, Mike and Melissa http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/local/lobos_potluck/

04/13/08
Stillwater and Metridium Fields with Mike http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/local/stillwater/

04/06/08
Lobos with John and Mike http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/local/lobos_branching/

04/05/08
Mile Buoy and Shale with Kevin, Rob and Allison http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/local/album_006/ http://coldwaterkitty.blogspot.com/2008/04/mile-buoy-and-shallow-shale.html

04/02/08
Night dive with Mike and Allison at Breakwater http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/local/20080402_BW_Night_Dive/ http://coldwaterkitty.blogspot.com/2008/04/night-dive-at-breakwater.html

03/30/08
Diving at Point Lobos with Rob and Allison. Another lovely day at Point Lobos, or something. At least it was an improvement on last week. Visibility was about 15 feet and surge was in the 5-8 foot range. We did all 4 of our nudibranch transects and decided to hit Turtle Bay for dive 2. The most interesting thing was saw was a small Triopha maculata that Rob found on Transect 5. Also Rob and Allison showed me a picture they had taken the previous day of Cadlina limbaughorum which at last provides photographic proof of my claim to having seen that species at Point Lobos a few years ago.

Pictures here.

03/24/08
Diving on the Escapade with Kevin Dow. Dangint but the diving weather this year has been really, really awful. Today was no exception. The wind was blowing 25 knots or so and the water color, well, it didn't look like water really as much as sludge. Ick. First dive was at Ballbuster. We ran into the bottom about the same time we saw it. The anchor was on the sand next to the pinnacle. Fortunately it was close enough that even in 3 foot vis we were able to get onto the pinnacle. Despite 3 other teams of divers, all with HID lights, we never saw anyone else on the dive. This would have been OK actually, except for the 10 foot surge. After about 30 minutes we shot a bag and came up. This is an interesing excercise in vis so bad you can't see past your buddy's shoulders even when you're face to face. I think we made it look pretty good, that is if anybody or anything could have see it. Getting back on the boat we found that the hand rail at the ladder had been broken somehow. Doh! Jim was philisophical. B.O.A.T; Break Out Another Thousand. :-/

Dive two was over at Shale Island. Conditions here weren't exactly good but by the standards of the day seemed very nice indeed. In fact we had almost 10 feet of visiblity and only 5 feet of surge. Despite the relative novelty of diving the shale at night we didn't see too much that was unusual, but at least we could see each other.

03/21/08
After not diving the previous weekend a break in the weather induced Sami and me to play "What would Kawika do?". Obviously the answer was to go night diving, so we did!

Pictures here.

03/17/08
We miss you dude.

03/16/08
Today was one day shy of the one year anniversary of the disappearance of my friend Kawika Chetron. We had hoped to do some diving in his honor at the shale beds but extremely high winds and reports of 2 foot vis led us to decide otherwise. We did manage a nice harbor cruise looking for otters and the very evil Jim Capwell even let me play with his new Nikon D3. Kawika would probably have said the Canon 1DsMkIII was better but I'm still a Nikon guy. After the cruise Mlis, Mike and I did some tidepooling at Coral Street and then the group re-formed at Vivolos for dinner with Kawika's dad and lots of stories about our friend.

Snapshots from the day here.

03/08/08
Diving the K2 pinnacle at Mount Chamberlin with Rob and Allison. Our original plan was to dive near Cypress Point but the weather looked decent so we headed south instead. After a short discussion we decided on the K2 pinnacle which is offshore of Yankee Point. The topography and encrusting life of this whole area is spectacular and seeing it in 60 foot vis doesn't hurt. Highlights included a china rockfish that actually cooperated for the camera and a small wolf eel that Allison found. Unfortuantely there weren't too many other fish to be seen. Hopefully now that this area is a marine reserve we'll start to see more rockfish and lingcod.

Pictures here.

03/02/08
Diving the middle reef with MikeJ and Mlis. This was one of those "Shoulda been here yesterday" kind of days. The wind had really picked up in the afternoon on Saturday and by Sunday the waves had really picked up. We did one dive and introduced Melissa to Itchy and Scratchy and also the warbonnet on transect 4. After surfacing we decided that one dive in low vis and high surge was plenty and that a hike might be a better idea than a second dive.

03/01/08
Diving with Rob and Allison.
Full gallery of pictures here, including some shots from Sunday's dives too.

02/16/08 - 02/17/08
Diving the Monterey Breakwater with Melissa Litwicki and Susan Bird. This was Melissa's certification weekend and I was playing along as Melissa's buddy in the class. Despite a truly cringe-worthy forecast I was very pleasantly surprised to pull into the parking lot and find that conditions looked fairly nice. Susan and mlis showed up shortly thereafter and within good order we were swimming out for dive one. Visibility was a reasonable 10-15 feet and the dives went very smoothly. Melissa is the first person I've met who actually bought a drysuit before learning how to dive and did her entire class in the drysuit. I tend to think that for people who are serious about becoming local divers this is a sensible choice. Drysuits aren't really much more difficult to dive than a thick jacket/farmer john wetsuit combo and they're much, much warmer. It's hard to keep a good attitude about local diving if you're freezing.

Sunday was similar with Melissa doing very well with the skills. Certainly doesn't look like a brand new diver. Conditions were decent and she was able to easily complete the skills required to complete the class. I doubt that very many new divers have seen more species of nudibranch on their first dives than Melissa did.

02/10/08
Diving Point Lobos with John. Plan was to swim out to 3 Sisters and pick a spot to do a nudibranch count. Surface conditions were a bit snotty with lots of wind and a good sized swell but at least the water looked blue. Out at 3 sisters it was quite surgy but with decent vis. We had a nice dive counting slugs and found a couple slightly less common ones like Dendronotus albus and Adalaria jannae. Coming back in I found a nice pipefish out in the open. Unfortuantely it was at 80 feet and we really needed to be at 70 feet to do our gas switch so I wasn't able to get any useful pictures. Conditions had really deteriorated during the dive so we decided on RG Burgers instead of a second splash.

01/27/08
Diving from the Escapade with John Heimann. Jim hasn't been getting wet enough lately so he decided to join us on the first dive. Conditions, in keeping with the trends in 2008, were pretty awful. Visibility was about 15 feet and surge a very unpleasant 10 feet or so. We poked around for awhile and I pretended to try and take pictures but it wasn't really happening. For our second dive we moved over to Shale Island. Jim decided not to join us for the second dive. This one did turn out to be a bit better than the first with significantly reduced surge. The highlight was probably the little red octopus we found sitting out in the open on the big navy anchor on the north side of the reef. I even managed a few pictures.

01/23/08
Up to date again finally. (Hi Adele!)

01/19/08
Diving Point Lobos with John after a long holiday and weather layoff. My report with a link to the pretty slug pictures is here.

12/4/16
Diving Point Lobos with Sami and Mike. When we arrived I immediately suggested that maybe hiking would be a better idea as it looked huge. We hiked up to the knoll overlooking Bluefish Cove and watched the waves for a while. Eventually Sami said "Well, it's pretty big but at least it's a blue big!". Indeed the water color looked nice, at least in those parts that weren't mostly foam. The launch ramp didn't look to bad so we figured as long as the entry and exit weren't going to be dangerous we should give it a try. Besides, I'd already deployed my float so I was going to have to get the drysuit wet anyway to get it back.

Conditions turned out to be quite reasonable given the conditions and we did two dives in 40 foot vis. Even the surge wasn't terrible, especially given what it looked like topside. Shooting macro was a bit of a bear though.

Pictures here.

12/11/07
After missing a weekend due to miserable weather I noticed a break in the swell model and rounded up some of the usual suspects for a weeknight insanity night dive. As usual the breakwater was very obliging in terms of interesting photo subjects. Have a look.

12/01/07
More slug counting on the Middle Reef at Point Lobos with John. Between the two of us we managed to do all 4 transects. That starts to get like work, even for a slug nerd such as myself. Still, Lobos is a pretty nice place to get work done. One fun highlight happened while I was surveying transect 5. I suddenly found myself face to face with a Mosshead Warbonnet that was out and about. Amazingly, even after I swapped my wet notes with John for the camera it hadn't gotten scared. I managed to get several very nice images before it finally found a hole and let me get back to nudibranch counting.

Pictures here.

11/18/07
Counting slugs on the Middle Reef at Point Lobos with John. A downside of getting behind on my logs is that I don't remember much from these dives. Didn't really get any worthwhile pictures, that I do know.

11/10/07
Diving Stewart's Point with Sami and Mike. We were hoping for a continuation of the jellyfish action I'd seen last weekend but alas there were none to be seen save a few forlorn carcasses on the bottom. Worse, the largish waves were still around. Despite this we had a fun dive with several harbor seals following us around at just past good camera distance. My exit was a bit ungraceful. Many thanks to Delia for rescuing my camera when I fell on my butt trying to walk out. We decided to go to RG Burger rather than try another dive as it was clear from the conditions we weren't going to get any pictures.

11/4/07
Jim Thopmson had introduced me to his friend Jeannie Duda who is a newer diver who was looking for somebody to go diving with in Monterey. Meanwhile Mike was feeling better and decided to come out with two of his friends Christine and Eva who were also new divers. We met at breakwater and had a look at the conditions. All I can say is "ick". While the red tide was in band slighly offshore of the breakwater it was clear that the visibility was going to be less than 5 feet, and it looked surgy and stirred up as well. We decided to have a look at Stewart's Point in Carmel instead since we knew that the visibility was going to be a lot better there.

Arriving at Stewart's Point I was at first concerned about the wave action but after watching for a while we decided it wasn't so bad and geared up. The reef here is a long swim out but the entry is a lot more protected than Monastery. Vis was good as we expected and we enjoyed a nice dive though Jeannie and I got separated from Mike's group early in the dive. Sadly for us the friendly harbor seal decided to hang out with Mike's group but the jellies put on a nice show and we did meet the seal at the surface. Jeannie tweaked her sinuses a bit on the dive so we decided to call it a day after one dive and headed over to RG Burger for lunch. Mike reported that he and Eva did a second dive and pretty much spent the entire dive playing with the seal. Naturally he didn't have a camera.

11/3/07
Diving with John on the Escapade for a BAUE recreational charter. Mike was supposed to join us too but complications from a root canal meant that he was still on Vicodin which seemed a contraindication for diving. The forecast said we shouldn't have much wind but there was a 6-8 foot swell. Leaving Monterey through the nasty, nasty red tide we found that whitecaps were already forming at Point Pinos and serveral of the other dive boats were turning around to head back into the bay. Their loss. We went south anyway and by Point Joe the winds had disappeared and the water changed dramatically from red to green to a beautiful clear blue. After some discussion we decided on diving the Outer Pinnacles and anchored on Jim's traditional spot near the middle of the structure.

I knew it was going to be epic the instant I jumped into the water. Visibility was easily 70 to 80 feet and there were jellyfish everywhere. John and decided to spend maybe 30 minutes on the reef and then come up and hang out with the jellies. Conditions on the bottom were challenging due to surge and a bit of current but the water clarity made up for it. I got some nice hydrocoral shots and we started back up. John then pointed out that the boat was easily visible from 70 feet so I delayed the jelly shoot for another 10 minutes as I tried to capture the boat and the reef in the same shot. When we arrived at 20 feet finally John shot a bag and we drifted with the Jellies for about 15 minutes.

Since dive one was so nice we decided to do a second dive at the Outer Pinnacles but we moved the boat slightly to Jim's newer anchorage which is a few hundred yards Northwest of the traditional spot. We again spent the first chunk of the dive admiring the hydrocoral and then headed up to play with the jellies. At about 30 feet I saw a silver missle come flying by us. I looked up and realized it was a stage bottle. Evidently Dionna had dropped it while she and Mark were doing drills during their ascent. We retrieved the bottle from the surface and returned it to them before again wandering away from the edge fo the kelp to shoot jellies. The current had abated during the surface interval so this time we didn't end up very far from the boat.

Pictures from the day by myself and Robert Lee are here.

10/28/07
Diving with Mark and Dionna from the Escapade. Really, really nice day today. Surface conditions (as they had been Saturday) were nearly perfect. The sun was out, there was hardly any wind and only a light swell from the Northwest. Our initial plan had been to dive on a spot on the deep shale that Kawika had discovered. Unfortuantely the water in the bay was about the color of iodine. And it smelled worse. Ick. We decided to go to Carmel where we knew the water was nice and blue. After some discussion we decided to dive at Pinnacle Point Wall which is a beautiful structure on the North side of Point Lobos. Susan and Beto went down the line first and after repositioning the boat Mark, Dionna and I followed. There was enough current that keeping the downline in sight was problematic. Eventually we lost it but fortunately that was just as we were picking up the reef. We ended up on a small pinnacle just South of the main reef but even after seeing Sue and Beto's lights on the main reef we decided to stay put as the reef we found was plenty nice. The deco was good fun as well; sort of like being inside the jellyfish exhibit at the Aquarium.

Pinnacle Point Wall (annex) pictures here.

10/27/07
Diving at Point Lobos for the BAUE Great Pinnacle Project. More on this later as we collate the data and organize the project page. I was, naturally, running the nudibranch survey team. Again, more later but the short version is: Doriopsilla spaldingi!

10/22/07
Diving with Rob, Allison and Kevin on the Escapade. Allison is a better writer and also more, uhhh, prolific than I am. Here is her report: In the Bay on the Escapade

10/13/07
Was diving with John on Saturday at Point Lobos. I think it was fitting that the day that we held a memorial for Anibal was also beautiful day for diving; Clear water, sunny skies, hardly any wind and just a bit of swell.

As is typical these days our first order of business was to do some survey work for the project. Despite rather more surge than we expected we surveyed transects 4 and 5 in good order. John even found a Flabellina trilineata at transect 4 which was one of the species that had been surprisingly missing from our counts so far. Then we moved in along the east side of the middle reef where it was a bit more sheltered from the swell. I found an old bit of kelp laying on the sand that was covered in bryozoans and was able to find and identify the very cryptic nudibranch Corambe pacific on one of the blades. BTW - teamwork is a great thing. There is no way I could have gotten pictures without having somebody there to hold the kelp in front of the camera. As we move back towards the south end of the reef we found that in some ways it was actually nicer closer in and that the surge at 25 feet was no worse there than it was at the end of the middle reef where it was more exposed.

On the second dive we continued exploring the shallow south end of the middle reef. John found a couple of Hopkins' Roses and after quite a bit of looking I managed to find Doto columbiana on a branch of Agolophenia hydroids. Again, teamwork was the key to actually getting a picture (John's gloves really give a scale for just how small those slugs are). This was a nice find as I'd never seen any species of Doto in the park and can now add that to the list.

Point Lobos Nudibranch Pictures for 10/13/07.

After the dive we stayed for the memorial service. Many thanks to Ildiko and crew for organizing that. I thought it was a lovely ceremony and the followup dinner at Siamese Bay was nice too.

10/06/07
Nice diving today. As usual the weather was better than the forecast. I was out with Mike and Josh on the Escapade for a BAUE recreational charter. The wind never really materialized so we did the Outer Pinnacles in good vis for dive one, took a break for some dolphin watching during the interval and splashed at Ballbuster for dive two.

Outer Pinnacles and Ballbuster

Was nice to see JJ at dinner last night too. He was here teaching a Tech 1 class I'm still laughing at the "Towing four scooters isn't so bad but more than that is a pain." comment. :-D

9/29/07
Played hookey from work with Sami for the last-of-the-season Big Sur trip on the Cypress Sea. Turned out to be a good decision. Unlike most of the previous trips there was hardly any wind and the ocean was glassy smooth. It wasn't an epic day for photography as it was cloudy and there was a long period swell that made for some surge but it was a great day for just diving and sightseeing. First dive was at Little Sur Pinnacle. This is a nice dive but the site is quite a bit smaller than I remember. Still, 60 foot vis, sheer walls, lots of rockfish and good invert life is always OK with me, even in it's too surgy for macro photography.

Dive two was at a pinnacle that Phil is calling Widow Maker for some reason. It's a very nice dive just around the corner from Point Sur. In fact there are two pinnacles right next to each other. One comes up to about 45 feet and the other a touch deeper. The life here looks more like the pinnacles on the north side of Sur with lots of hydrocoral and corynactis. We also saw a warbonnet and I managed to find (but not photo) a Doto columbiana.

Dive three was at Unicorn Harbor which I've decided might be the nicest kelp forest dive around. The topography is great with multiple channels and walls, a nice swimthrough and very pretty encrusting life. The kelp bed is very dense above the reef and the canopy is filled with fish. We saw quite a few moon jellies on this dive and also a big salp chain.

I managed a few pictures despite the surge.

9/22/07
We've been looking at a pinnacle offshore of Point Sur that Beto found on the sonar maps for some time now. Back in July we got as far as being anchored there before being forced to look for more sheltered waters. Today we were out on the Escapade again in much better conditions but the pinnacle still didn't give in easily. In fact it wasn't even our initial plan for the day. That would have been the south wall at Mount Chamberlin. We arrived onsite to find flat seas, beautiful blue water and a big research vessel called the Valero IV? which was conducting ROV operations. They requested that we give them a very wide berth so we decided to just keep going south and have another go at Midway Pinnacle.

Midway is something of an extension of the Big Sur Bank. It's more inshore being only 2 miles off of the point rather than about 4 where we've doing diving before. The Bathymetry looked really promising as the pinnacle came straight up from 200 feet on all sides to point at about 110 feet. We anchored on top of the reef and quickly headed for the line. Right away we realized it was going to be an effort to get to the pinnacle as there was quite a surface current. As we descended the angle of the line changed and became nearly vertical which was worrisome though there was still a very strong current so it seemed likely we were still anchored. As we arrived at 140 feet it was clear that we had slipped and that the anchor was no longer on the pinnacle and, worse, even in the good vis we couldn't see any sign of it. We could see the bubbles of the scooter team below us and they didn't seem to be on the rock either. Rather than burn gas we aborted for a profile of something like 140 for 3 minutes with a runtime of about 10 minutes.

Back on the surface we waited for the scooter team who were more stubborn in looking for the pinnacle but after about 12 minutes at 200 they too aborted without any success. By now the anchor was seriously stuck and multiple efforts to free it were unsuccessful. The line up to the float was so taut you could play a tune on it. Still, it was a lovely day topside; very flat, with blue water and the sun was even coming out. Somehow it just didn't seem right to give up yet. We put down a descent line on the pinnacle and tried again, this time dropping the divers up current and drifting into the pinnacle. This, at long last, brought us to the reef. And what a reef it was.

Midway Pinnacle

Perhaps not my best effort with the camera but with all the effort it was hard to concentrate on silly things like strobe placement and composition. Somehow I just didn't have the energy but man, what an amazing dive. Rockfish of every description, including schools of what we think were widow rockfish. Huge heads of hydrocoral, gorgonians, sponges, corynactis, etc. Good stuff.

At least the deco was uneventful and we were treated to the company of a friendly sea lion during the O2 stops. The ride home featured rissos dolphins, minke whales and even several blue whales spouting off in the distance.

9/18/07
I know, long time, no post. Sorry about that. I think I'm up to date now.

9/16/07
Diving with Mike, John and Jason at Point Lobos. Our mission today was threefold. I wanted John and Jason to count a couple of the transects to get people other than me, Rob and Allison involved in the nudibranch survey. Second, we hoped to explore around the Granite Point area and try to add to the total number of nudibranch species we've seen in the park. Finally, we did hope to have some fun. Indeed it turned out to be a good day with excellent weather conditions. Well, excellent except for the lack of sun but we didn't have wind nor waves either so it was all good as far as I was concerned. We didn't manage to actually find any truly unusual slugs though I did find another Melibe. Another highlight was watching a very large copper rockfish consume a kelp crab. Quite a mouthful I must say.

Images here.

9/09/07
Diving with Mike and John at Point Lobos. Damn but this is a nice place to have in our backyard. Along with Rob and Allison we managed to survey all four of the nudibrnach transects and have time left for fun and picture taking. Visibility was decent and surge negligable. From a photo standpoint the best part of the day was finding a mosshead warbonnet out in the open, cooperatively posing for pictures. That doesn't happen often. Of course when it does you can be sure it's at the end of a dive when one of your buddies is running low on air.Pictures here.

9/02/07
Back from another trip to BC on the Nautilus Explorer. I think this is trip number nine for me. Hey Mike - when do I start getting frequent diver credits? Visibility wasn't as nice as on some of the previous trips but the number and variety of interesting macro subjects made up for it.

Images here.

8/18/07
WAY SOUTH again! Man, these trips are fun. Heck, I even like the long boat ride. As usual, weather was an issue but once we got past Pfieffer Point it smoothed out nicely. We tucked in at Compost and John and I had a great dive in 80 foot plus visibility. I think I had the most fun hanging out in the kelp during our ascent looking at the Corambes and Dendronotuses which were everywhere.

We had hoped to dive Partington Landing for dive two but that was a bit outside of the lee from Pfieffer Point so we tried a variation on the usual Partington Canyon Spot. Visibility was slightly lower here and it was a touch surgy but John and I found a nice rock to hide behind that had loads of interesting macro life on it. There were also a number of small egg yolk jellies in the water column which were an interesting challenge to shoot with the 105mm.

Dive three was really incredible. We moved back closer to Pfieffer Point and dropped anchor at Unicorn Harbor. Previously I'd been distracted after finding some Eubranchids on a hydroid right next to the anchor and hadn't explored much. This time John and I got a good look around. It's an amazing site with multiple north-south ridges each featuring walls on both sides that are at least 30 feet high and very vertical. The encrusting life is very dense and the nudibranchs, man, it would be easier to list what we didn't see. The 100 foot vis didn't hurt either. Really, really nice.

Images here.

8/12/07
Happy Birthday to Me! Diving today at Point Lobos with Dave and Josh on the first dive and Mike and Josh on the second. We did nudibranch survey work on the first dive and were mostly having fun and taking pictures on the second. Nothing too much out of the ordinary, just another day in diving paradise.

Pictures here.

8/04/07
Divint on the Escapade with Mike and Sami on the BAUE Long Range Recreational charter. Certainly couldn't have picked a much nicer day which immediately resulted in the selection of Lobos Rocks as the first dive site. While surge was light but the standards of this site, visibility wasn't what we had hoped and for some reason there weren't many sea lions. Ah well, the southwest corner of the outer rock is still probably the prettiest spot on the coast with the Anthropleura anemones, huge aggregations of ochre stars and the usual Big Sur Corynactus, hydrocoral, etc.

Dive two was at Flintstones. Sami wasn't feeling well so he sat out. Again the visibilty was slightly disappointing and combined with a current and more surge than I expected it made picture taking hard. Again, no matter. It's an amazing dive and the clouds of moon jellies in the upper parts of the water column were quite a sight to see as well.

Pictures here.

7/28/07
Diving on the Cypress Sea with Cameron and Ryan Wheeler. Today was another Way South Big Sur trip. While there was some wind in the forecast the swell wasn't bad and it certainly looked beautiful as we rounded Point Pinos. It didn't look half bad at Point Sur either so we decided to give "Bloody Stump" a try. This is a pinnacle right near the point that breaks in a big swell, hence the name. Surprisingly the current wasn't too awful and we headed down the line for a look. The pinnacle iteself turned out to be a bit anti-climactic. While it featured all of the expected encrusting life like corynactis and hydrocoral everything had a very weatherbeaten and disheveled look. We also noticed that the substrate was surprisingly soft and crumbly. I doubt this pinnacle will even exist in 200 years given the weather here. The ascent was rather odd as the wind was pushing the boat 180 degrees from the current. As a result we were swimming into a current with the boat in front of us and the line going down behind us. Very unnatural. After the dive Susan suggested we re-name it "Just a Flesh Wound".

Dive two was at Compost which is always a treat. The visibility was much worse here (15 feet vs 40 at Bloody Stump). On the other hand it was significantly less surgy and there wasn't any current. I spent most of the dive looking for and photographing Eubranchus rustyus which is my new favorite slug.

After some discussion tryign to talk Phil out of diving Partington Canyon again we compromised and anchored just Southeast of Partington Landing. This dive featured a very nice wall right close to shore that reminded us of the Middle Reef at Point Lobos, but with more fish. The best part of the dive was finding a Penpoint Gunnel up in the kelp during our ascent. After a bit it got annoyed with my camera and swam over to me and curled up on the left strobe where it could no longer be photographed. Happily this did allow us a close look at it. Visibility here was much better than Compost and all agreed we would love to explore it some more.

The ride home was quite exciting, especially near Point Sur and Cypress Point. The wind had come up to around 25 knots making for some really nasty wind chop. Fortunately we made it back with no injuries or major equipment damage in evidence.

7/21/07
A fine day out on the Cypress Sea with Robert and Allison. I took a chance with the macro port on a way south trip and it paid off as I managed to find Eubranchus rustyus.

Pictures here.

7/15/07
Diving Point Lobos with a large group of fellow BAUE members. Allison does a better job of dive reports than I do so I'll let her do the report for me.

7/07/07
Tech trip day on the Escapade. Our initial plan was to dive a spot off of Point Sur between the point and the banks. The weather forecast didn't seem too promising for that mission, however. Jim seemed bent on doing it anyway and despite several attempts my Beto and myself to suggest sites closer to home we slogged our way South in ever building winds until we arrived onsite near Point Sur. By this time the white caps were getting pretty serious and we all agreed it was best if we looked for a calmer location which turned out to be Las Piedras wall. This is a nice dive in it's own right, or would be in decent visibility. Sadly, visibility wasn't on the menu. Even at 140 feet we still couldn't see more than about 10 feet and it was significantly worse than that closer to the surface. Mark, Dionna and I toughed it out and I even tried to take some pictures which, unsurprisingly, didn't amount to much.

For dive two we moved back North to the Outer Pinnacles. Visibility there was even worse. Adding insult to injury our attempt to practice a few skills resulted in one of Mark's stage bottles going missing.

Lame pictures here.

7/04/07
Diving Point Lobos with Dionna and Suzanne for the 4th of July. I had high hopes based on the previous Saturday but these were quickly dashed as the visibility had deteriorated quite markedly. We swam out to Beto's reef and it was barely better than 15 feet even there and rather surgy to boot. Still a reasonable dive. Doc joined Suzanne and me on the second and Dionna sat out due to a leaky drysuit. We tooled around the East side of the middle reef looking for nudibranchs though I didn't find much of anything interesting.

Conditions for the fireworks show were much better than for diving. Uncharacteristically for Monterey this time of year there was no fog at all. We all went and met Jim on the Escapade for a nice view out on the water.

6/30/07
Wow, very nice diving indeed today. BTW where was everybody? Unless you had a good excuse like Lobos reservations you should have been on the Escapade with Mike and me.

The 15-25 knot wind that was forecast never materialized and I don't think we saw a whitecap until we were already underway for home after the second dive. Meanwhile the swell was only about 2-3 feet. First dive was at a ridge outside of Local's Ledge. There was a murky green layer in about the first 10 feet but visibility was at least 50 feet below that; except that is for a thin patchy layer right on the reef. This turned out to be a huge cloud of mysid shrimp. Eventually we found that visibility was best on the side of the wall at the north edge of the reef. The shrimp seemed to be mostly right on the top of the pinnacle.

My camera is back from Backscatter but they didn't open until about half an hour after the boat left the dock so I left the photography to Mike. He was shooting wide angle so naturally I went looking for tiny nudibranchs. Sorry Mike, couldn't help it! Among other things I found Cuthona fulgens again.

For dive two we decided on the Outer Pinnacles and Jim put the boat on the North West end which is an area a bit away from where we usually dive. With a light load Jim even joined us for this dive and conditions there were even better. Vis was good from the surface on down and peaked at 50 or 60 feet at the bottom. Again Mike was shooting hydrocoral while I went looking for little stuff. Cool slugs included Catriona columbiana and some really small aeolids that I wasn't able to ID. Probably Eubranchus sp.

On the ascent we was several egg yolk and sea nettle jellyfish.

Mike's pictures here.

6/24/07
Dave, John, Mark and I were out on the Escapade yesterday afternoon. The idea was to get in one fun dive and then do some skills practice. We got the first half done but the weather intervened and prevented the practice part.

We splashed at Hopkins Deep Reef for dive one. Vis was really nasty at the surface - say about 4 feet. By 20 feet it was starting to open up a little and then at 60 feet the layer ended and at depth we had a very nice 40-50 feet of visibility. Since there was hardly any swell it was quite calm on the bottom. Turned out to be a really good dive for nudibranch hunting. Here's my tally for the dive:

Diaphorodoris lirulaticauda > 10
Polycera atra > 10
Triopha catalinae > 10
Triopha maculata 1
Cadlina luteomarginata 4
Cadlina flavomaculata 1
Rostanga pulchra 5
Peltodoris nobilis 2
Doriopsilla albopunctata 3
Geitodoris heathi 2
Hermissenda crassicornis 5
Flabellina iodinea 1

Some of these are rather unusual so it certainly counted as a good dive in my book. Dave also found an octopus. Sadly the jellyfish that had been reported last week were nowhere to be found.

When we surfaced it was really starting to blow. Then, the anchor got stuck and by the time we'd freed it the wind was probably in excess of 30 knots so we called it a day. Practice will have to wait until next week I guess.

6/09/07
Diving today with Beto, Doc Wong, Dionna and Mark. Beto was practicing his Tech 1 instructor skills as he works towards getting certified to teach that class. Dionna and Mark were playing student while Doc filmed. I mostly just watched, but that can be very educational too. After the training dives Beto, Doc and I went for a fun dive looking for nudibranchs. Nothing out of the ordinary this time but it's always nice to be in the water.

6/03/07
Diving today with Rob and Allison on the Escapade at East Pinnacles. Our diving was delayed for a bit as we spent nearly an hour watching a large pod of mixed dolphins off of Point Joe. The show included Rissos, Northern Right Whale Dolphins and Common Dolphins. The Rissos were even doing some bow-riding which is rather unusual. We were almost reluctant to had south and go diving.

Diving was the plan for the day though so we dropped the hook at the East Pinncles. Visibility was a very nice 40 feet and there were a number of pelagic inverts in evidence, including several small but fully formed egg-yolk jellies. I had the macro lens on so I set about looking for nudibranchs. This proved very successful indeed as in rapid sucession I found both Catriona columbiana and Cuthona fulgens. I'd seen the former once before here but didn't have a camera. Cuthona fulgens was new to me. Both were quite small and proved challenging to photograph in the surge. I also found a sea spider. Then, right as I was calling the dive a nice sized wolf eel swam by.

Dive two proved to be rather short. As soon as I started descending the flood alarm started going off so I rather rapidly aborted and got back onto the boat. It isn't clear what happened to cause the leak alarm to go off. There appeared to be a few drops of water in the housing but it's possible I dribbled them in there in my haste to open it. I dropped it off at Backscatter and Berkley is going to have Dan Blodgett give it a look. The good news is that nothing was seriously damaged.

5/26/07
Beach Dive Photo Comp day! The forecast looked very nice indeed and as recently as Tuesday the visibility had been excellent. Of course Nature abhors a photo competition so the swell was significantly higher than expected and the water at Monastery was a nasty dark green. Diving with Dave and Mike I managed a couple of competent but boring pictures but I wasn't too sanguine about my chances after the first dive. In fact, about all I managed to do was tweak my back on the exit. For dive two we went over the the Metridium Fields where the vis was even worse but at least the entry wasn't so onerous. Again I managed a couple of boring shots but nothing to win a contest with. Unlike last year I wasn't pleasantly surprised by results and took home only one honorable mention. Oh well, the deep prize pool in this contest meant that I did score one of these which I most certainly will use (would have been nice to have last week) and which doesn't cost me additional money in airfare as the trip to PNG did last year.

5/20/07 to 5/22/07
Bay Area Underwater Explorers was pleased to host Alicia Hermosillo and Roberto Chavez Arce for 3 days of intensive branching and a very nice talk by Alicia on Sunday. Alicia found 3 different species that I'd never seen before and I found one that neither of us had seen. Included amongst these were Hancockia californica, Ancula gibbosa and Diaphorodoris lirulaticauda. Please don't ask me how to pronounce the last one. Despite some surge we had generally good conditions and the visibility was especially nice at Point Lobos on Monday. Diving with Alicia is always a treat as she has a truly amazing ability to find the interesting small things.

5/5/07
Diving with Mike Jimenez and Chuck Tribolet from the Black Dog. The forecast didn't look good for going around the corner so we dropped the hook at the Anchor Farm. Visibility was about 15-20 feet and green but serviceable for our purposes; shooting nudibranchs. There were a number of interesting species including Aegeris albopunctata, Flabellina iodinea and Tochuina tetraqueta. Mike wasn't feeling well after the dive so we called it a day.

4/28/07
Diving with Dave Chamberlin in his first outing in quite some time. Good to have you back Dave. We took a look at Monastery but I decided it looked a bit big to go diving there with a camera. Next stop was Coral Street but it looked like surfing would have been a better activity there. Hmmm. The breakwater parking lot was full to overflowing so we settled on Otter Cove. Getting in and out here is a pain what with all the small, slippery rocks and piles of dead kelp. We managed somehow and despite a fair amount of surge had a fun dive. The harbor seals quickly realized that I had a macro lens on the camera and so we were able to spend most of the dive playing with them as they had no fear of having their picture taken.

For dive two we made our way back to the breakwater where the parking lot had cleared out. Visibility reports were not encouraging but it hadn't been that bad (10-15 feet) at Otter Cove so we gave it a go. Visibility, if it could be called that, was in fact about 3-5 feet. Worse, there was a cruise ship in port and it was louder than a Metallica concert underwater - even through our 9mm hoods. Not the best of dives but certainly memorable.

4/22/07
Diving Point Lobos with Rob, Allison and Anibal. For the first dive the plan was to get some shots of animals that live in hydrocoral that Beto needed for an article he's working on. Despite a bit of surge I managed to get some useful shots. In doing so I discovered that there are boring clams that live in hydrocoral. Learn something every day.

Allison and Anibal sat out dive two. Rob and I decided to go out to Hole-In-The-Wall. There we'd remove a line Beto and Doc had laid on their first dive for a survey of that spot. We accomplished this straight away but while doing so I noticed my suit was leaking badly. You never like to hear a gurgling noise when you press the inflator button on your drysuit. Not being fond of hypothermia I called the dive once we had the line picked up and we headed back in.

4/17/07
Back from PNG.

Pictures here.

Regular Monterey diving to resume shortly.

3/27/07
I'm off to PNG. Back April 10th.

3/170/07
Diving with nearly the whole BAUE gang at Point Lobos for the nudibranch project. Pretty awful vis but I think we managed to get done what we needed to.

Topside Photo Gallery

3/10/07
Diving with John on the Escapade for the BAUE tech charter. The plan for the day was to break the group into two groups and have each group do one dive at Mt Chamberlin and then move the boat and have everyone do a second dive. Swells didn't seem to bad but it was quite windy, especially south of Point Lobos. After surveying the scene a bit we decided it wasn't so bad and put the first team in the water. They hardly drifted during their decompression and reported exellent vis. John and I joined Nick Radov and Andy Mrozek for the second dive and, indeed, it was very nice. I'd have to call the visibility 80 feet and it's a real treat to be able to get a feel for the landscape on a local dive. The reef is actually prettier than I remembered with loads of really nice elephant ear sponges. There were lots of rockfish too including vermilions, rosies, copper, gopher, starry and blue rockfish.

For the second dive we retreated into Carmel Bay and got in a nice relaxing recreational dive at Outer Butterfly House. Visibility wasn't nearly as nice there but it was still a very reasonable 30 feet or so.

Pictures from Mt Chamberlin and Outer Butterfly House.

3/3/07 and 3/4/07
Nice diving this weekend eh?

Met up with Sami on Saturday at Coral Street and enjoyed some very nice vis, especially in the shallow parts inside the cove. Would have been even better if the harbor seals had cooperated but they kept their distance today. Then did another dive at MacAbee with Robert and Allison Lee. Vis wasn't as nice there but it was still a nice relaxing dive. Then over to Point Lobos on Sunday with Robert again, John Heimann and Anibal Mata-Sol for some really excellent branching on the Middle reef.

Weekend Photo Gallery

Wide angle shots are from the Coral Street dive and the macro is from Point Lobos.

2/25/07
Look who's back!

2/24/07
Man, is Point Lobos great or what? The weather forecast for the weekend looked a bit sketchy but somehow, Whaler's Cove being a blessed place, it looked pretty darn nice at Lobos. John and I did a very nice relaxing tour of the middle reef and I was finally able to get some macro shots of nudibranchs. On our second dive Suzanne and Andy joined us and we had a fun time looking for more slugs at the greater Hole in the Wall area.

Nudibranch Pictures

2/17/07
John and I had been hoping to get some practice in and the plan was to do one dive at breakwater for that and spend a second dive looking for nudibrnachs. Mother Nature didn't cooperate. When we arrived at the parking lot it was obvious that shore diving wasn't going to be much fun as the wind was ripping and waves were breaking about chest high at the base of the wall. We considered going hiking before deciding to see if we could sweettalk our way onto Kawika's boat. Kawika was nice enough to let us join him but it ended up being a short trip. With 30 knot winds or so the only safe place we could find to anchor was in the sand just North of the breakwater. Conditions on the bottom weren't so bad but since we were boat diving and needed to stay within site of the anchor we didn't see much. Oh well, we did get our practice in.

2/10/07
Diving at the breakwater with a group of divers doing nudibranch ID training for the project at Point Lobos. Joining me for a nice long dive at the Metridium Fields were Suzanne Baird, Nick Radov, Mark Lloyd, Harry Babicka and John Heimann. We had a productive dive finding about half of the species on our list. Mark even found a Cadlina sparsa. I think all were helped out by the nicely laminated ID sheets that Kevin Dow made based on my presentation to the club. Thanks Kevin! (and also Mark Lloyd and Mike Jimenez for the pictures).

John and I then did a second dive looking for branchs in the shallow areas of the wall at the breakwater. It's a nice place to dive on a day when all the weather is from the West and South. The highlight for me was finding an Aldisa sanguinea.

2/03/07
I got into work on Friday morning and waiting for me was an email from Kawika pointing out the nice forecast for the weekend and asking if I'd like to dive the Farallones. Lemme think about.. Yes! Duh. Our only issue was finding a fourth person (the third being Chuck Tribolet). This is where having a dive club composed of squared away divers really comes in handy. Just anybody won't do out at the Farallones. Two phone calls later and Mark Lloyd was onboard and we had our team. We met at Half Moon Bay where conditions looked very nice indeed. They stayed that way until we got about 8 miles out when we started encountering a fairly nasty East wind. East winds are unusual and the forecast had the winds shifting to the West in the afternoon. We decided to keep going but upon reaching Middle Farallon it didn't look too good. Not wanting to immediatly turn around for a nasty two hour ride back into the teeth of the wind we hid behind SEFI (South East Farallon Island), ate lunch and hoped the wind would switch as predicted.

After a couple of hours the conditions did improve although we were now running a bit short on time. We settled on doing one dive near Middle Farallon at the spot we been in 2005 called Fair to Middlin. Chuck and I were the second group. Kawika and Mark had reported excellent vis and excellent it was. From 65 feet we could easily see Chuck's boat. We also found a wolf eel which later examination of photographic evidence turned out to be the same one Kawika and I had seen in 2005. We've decided to call her Bette Middler. Unlike the last time were here there were no mycid shrimp in the water. Not many fish either but the encrusting hydrocoral is certainly very pretty.

The ride back was much easier than the ride out as the wind had dropped to nearly nothing. Dinner was at Mezzaluna where the waiter made sure to correct our attempts at pronouncing the menu items.

Middle Farallon Pictures

2/01/07
Mike Jimenez and I, noticing the nice weather forecast, took a day off to do some scouting for the Point Lobos Nudibranch Project. While we didn't see anything incredibly out of the ordinary diving in Whalers Cove in good conditions is always a treat. It was also nice to chat with Phil Sammet who I hadn't seen in a while.

Point Lobos Pictures

1/28/07
Back for more practice with the macro lens setup, this time diving with John Heimann at the breakwater. Also there was Alberto Nava and his DIRF students. We chatted for awhile and then John and I went looking for critters on the sand next to the wall. Conditions were quite excellent. The bay looked like a lake and the water was clear blue with maybe 40 feet of visibility. By far the most interesting subject turned out to be a Onespot Fringehead who was living in an old crab claw. For dive two we headed out on the sand in the general area of the Metridium Fields. Early in the dive John found an electric ray that was being eaten alive by a Cancellaria cooperi snail. After getting some shots of the vampire snail we very gingerly dropped a sea star on the ray to see if it was still alive. It was, and swam off, seemingly no worse for wear.

Underwater Pictures
Topside Pictures

1/20/07
Diving Hopkins Deep Reef with Kawika. Second time out for the macro lens. The wind looked pretty nasty so we stayed close to home for two pretty nice dives at Hopkins Deep Reef. I didn't get any images worth posting but after spending nearly 2 hours underwater playing with sculpins and blackeye gobies I think I was starting to get the hang of the macro lens.

1/13/07
Diving on the Escapade with Marciano, Susan and John

1/08/07

Frequent dive buddy and fellow GUE Tech 1 student Paul Braunbehrens died yesterday from brain cancer. RIP Paul.

1/07/07
Happy New Year! I'm back from spending the holidays in Colorado. I had missed the last weekend before the break due to horrible weather so naturally the forecast was for 25 knot NW winds and an 11-13 foot NW swell. I went diving anyway.

Joining me at Point Lobos were John Heimann and Marciano Moreno who was visiting from Mexico. Happily the conditions weren't as bad as feared. The water was nice clear vis and the swell low enough that it wasn't particularly stirred up inside the cove. The nasty wind made the swim out a bit unpleasant so we dropped a bit earlier after watching the kelp below us. It wasn't moving much so we figured the surge couldn't be that bad; and it wasn't. Shortly into the dive a big harbor seal swam up and spent a few minutes checking us out. Other highlights included a big school of olive/yellowtail rockfish being cleaned by a surf perch, four or five large sheephead and a cabezon which evidently gotten some food poisoning. It coughed up a crab while we were watching and to the extent a fish has expressions it looked rather nauseated.

Dive two was spent more on the middle reef which was still very nice despite some surge.

12/09/06
Diving with John on the Escapade. This was the first really big storm day of the season. Fortuantely the swell was due West and the very strong winds were from the East. This didn't leave us with many options, but at least we had options. Dive number one was at the Mile Buoy. The water on the surface was a beautiful clear blue. We probably had in excess of 70 foot vis. Once on the bottom it was a bit stirred up; maybe more like 25-30 feet. Still, not bad on a day with 15 foot swells. Highlights included a wolf eel and a small basket star in a gorgonian.

Dive two was near the old anchor farm. Visibility was a bit reduced on the bottom here and it was rather surgy. Conditions deteriorated markedly during the dive with the 20 foot stop being rather unpleasant. Diving was followed by the annual holiday party at Jim's place.

12/07/06
All caught up again. Sorry once again for the spotty coverage. Best bet for keeping track of my diving activities these days is to look at the Local Diving Images page at the BAUE site.

12/06/06
Breakwater midweek insanity night dive with Mike.

12/03/06
Diving with John at Point Lobos. Gotta say wow. Really great diving conditions. Vis was at least 50 feet, and that was right at the launch ramp! It didn't really improve as much as it usually does as we went out deeper but it's hard to complain with 60 feet of blue vis, flat seas and bright sunshine. The first dive was for photography and for the second one we joined Robert Lee (who I gather is taking a DIRF from Beto in February) and did some location scouting for the nudibranch project at Hole In The Wall and the end of the Middle Reef. By my count we found 17 species which isn't bad.

Images from the dive at the BAUE site.

11/19/06
Diving with Kawika. First dive was on his niftey little spot on the deep shale. Someday I'm going to see this spot on a day with nice conditions. This wasn't it but it was better than the last two times I've been there. Vis was about 20 feet on the bottom and it was a touch surgy. Highlights included several large bocaccio. Also my camera apparently saw a basket star (which I missed during the dive).

By the time we got up from the first dive it looked to be laying down a bit so we went south for dive two which ended up being at the usual spot at the East Pinnacles. Nice vis and beautiful topside conditions. I got a decent photo of the now over-photographed super hydrocoral patch.

Images from the dive at the BAUE site.

11/11/06
Back out on the Escapade with John. No camera today as I was too tired after the cave and line seminar. First dive was at The Needle. Vis was excellent which was good because the anchor ended up at 110 feet quite a distance from the pinnacle. John and I explored a bit up current and started to see the reef so we left the anchor line and spent our dive on the wall. Sadly not everyone was able to see the pinnacle and some had to abort. Fortunately for John and me Doc Wong and Ian Puleston did find the reef. Better yet they had run a reel to the anchor which made the return navigation a snap! Just before we went back to the line we got a quick look a Mola mola. Can't figure out why but we haven't seen many this year.

The second dive was at Ballbuster which is always nice. Nothing unusual today though and none of the resident wolf eels seemed to be home.

11/10/06
Diving today at Point Lobos with Doc Wong and Ryan Press as part of the Line and Survey seminar presented by GUE instructors Danny Riordan and Chris LeMaillot. Certainly a worthwhile use of two days as we all learned a lot. If you're thinking of cave training these guys are great.

Topside photos here.

11/04/06
Jim decided to run another Captain's Charter but various conflicts kept me from signing up early. Late in the week after learning Mike could go I called Jim to see if there was still space available. Evidently not a single person had signed up! Before I could say "never mind" Jim had offered to take the two of us out. Turned out to be a fun day. There was a significant southwest swell but we went around the corner anyway and did our first dive at Jawdropper. Vis was nice at depth but it was very surgy. We went back to the bay for the second dive over at the shale beds which was much more relaxing. Better still there were loads of Melibe nudibrnachs. I also found a Danforth anchor which we eventually determined had been lost by the owner of the fuel dock. Jim repatriated the anchor when we got back to the dock.

Photos in the usual location at the BAUE site.

10/28/06
Diving with Kawika on the Rapture. The forecast was iffy but when we got out to Point Pinos it seemed that we might catch a break so we went south. After dropping anchor in a deeper area of the Outer Pinnacles we found highly variable visibility ranging from a blue 50 feet to a murky 20. Still a nice dive however and I managed some nice shots of the boat with the sun in the background.

Deciding not to press our luck we headed back to the bay for dive 2 and settled on the Old Anchor Farm. I found the bit concrete block to be quite photogenic with the corynactis and metridiums growing on it.

10/22/06
Got in two nice dives at Point Lobos with Mike and John. Mike posted some images at the BAUE site.

10/14/06
Diving on the Escapade with Mark and Dionna. Originally we were hoping to dive Pt Sur Bank but nobody was really into it after last weekend. First dive instead was at Las Piedras Wall which is certainly very nice in it's own right. Vis was pretty bad at the surface but it opened up at depth making for a night dive like effect. Nothing too amazing during the dive but while we were on the surface and the second team was in the water we had a Minke Whale come up to the boat and spend nearly 20 minutes circling around. Sadly the teams in the water didn't see it.

Second dive was at a new unnamed pinnacle south of Point Sur. Hey - we got the Escapade South of Sur! :-) This proved to be a pretty dive. The north and east parts of the pinnacle featured sheer walls and there were a lot fish. I also found some showy snailfish living in a broken eisenia stipe.

10/11/06
We went out today to recover Bob's body which we were fortunately able to do. Hopefully we'll never have to do anything like this again. Dive Safe.

10/07/06
Robert Crawford, RIP

My Report on ScubaDiverNet
Rebreather World Memorial Thread

And finally there is the reason we dive places like Pt Sur Bank.

10/01/06
Jim setup a "Captain's Charter" and with a nice weather forecast this seemed like a fine trip to be on so Mike and I signed up. First dive was at Soberanes Wall with really incredible vis. A harbor seal spent quite a bit of time tailing us but never quite posing for pictures. We did manage some good shots of the boat which didn't move around as much.

Our second dive was at Que Paso Pinnacle. The vis wasn't quite a nice here for some reason but it was still a nice dive.

Pictures here.

9/24/06
Shore diving with Mike Jimenez today. First dive was at South Monastery. Mostly tooling around looking for little stuff for Mike's macro lens. One highlight was an entire flock of cormorants that came by at about 30 feet at sone point. We were disappointed not to see the humpback whale that we'd seen on the surface at the edge of the kelp beds while underwater.

Dive two was back at the breakwater for something involving a bit less swimming. Mostly this dive was about looking for little things again such as Doto nudibranchs. We also saw what we think was a juvenile bull sculpin.

9/16/06
Diving Big Sur with Mark Lloyd on the Escapade. First dive was at Lobos Rocks were despite the usual insane surge we were treated to quite a show by the local pinnipeds. They're hard to shoot however as for some reason they don't like to sit still.

For our second dive we tried a new pinnacle near Malpaso that Captain Jim had found by looking at the sonar maps. It's quite nice with very spectacular topography though perhaps not as much encrusting life as some of the other Big Sur sites. Amazingly on our first day of diving after back from BC (where we didn't get any photo ops with the big octos) we quickly found a very large octopus wandering around in the open. It posed for pictures for a bit - even moving over to a nice metridium background before wandering off into deep water.

9/14/06
Hey - I'm back back from BC. Diving was lovely as usual. Check out the Image Gallery over at the BAUE site.

8/26/06
Diving for the Shale Island project with Andy Mrozek. Details here.

8/21/06
Good grief I've fallen way behind again. Many apologies for the lack of updates. Note that I'll be off to BC again on Sept 2nd which will probably limit updates until around the 11th.

8/19/06
WAY South on Big Sur again with John and Doc Wong.

Photos from the day's diving can be seen here.

8/12/06
WAY South on Big Sur with Sue and Beto.

Photos from the day's diving can be seen here.

8/05/06
Afternoon diving on the Escapade with Mike. Jim had a new spot near Aumentos he wanted to show us but it was SOOO flat that I talked him into doing Strawberry Peak instead. This, I think, was a good decision as the water was clear and I'd forgotton how pretty the spot is. It's one of the few places in the Monterey area were you can see a large number of Metridium senile and the other encrusting life isn't bad either. During the dive I noticed the kelp start to heel over and by the time we got back to the top of the pinnacle the current was really ripping; enough that I could only barely hang onto the bull kelp to keep from being swept away. I slid all the way to the end of the stip and finally found purchase on the ball end.

Dive 2 was at Shale Island as a practice day for our upcoming project. Vis was decent there too after descending through a murky layer. Things went well and I think we have a good handle on what we need to do for the project itself.

Photos from the day's diving can be seen here.

7/29/06
Diving with Mike from the Escapade. First dive was a new spot that Jim found on the sonar maps outside of Local's Ledge. Basically a long ridge with a very steep wall on the north side it proved to be an excellent dive. A big school of blue rockfish greeted us as we descended onto the reef and the encrusting life was quite lush, especially hydrocoral. The second half of the dive somehow turned into a hunt for one of the other divers' wayward scooter but fortunately it was recovered at the surface.

Dive 2 was at the Outer Pinnacles. We said hi to the resident wolf eel and I had some fun shooting yet more hydrocoral pictures. Then Mike and I took turns blinding a poor cabezon with our strobes.

Photos from the day's diving can be seen here.

7/23/06
Diving with Kawika and Mike. First dive was not at Flintstones, though not for lack of trying. If the current is leaving a significant wake behind the boat it's time to pull anchor and go somewhere else. Plan B was the East Pinnacles but the kelp was all pulled under by the current so we went with Plan C at Fire Rock. Visibility was terrible with long stringers of algae in the water. The significant surge didn't help either. About the only highlight was a mosshead warbonnet. I managed to not take a single usable picture.

Dive 2 was back in the bay at the shallow shale. For something different we dove the east end of the reef instead of the usual spot on the west. Visibility wasn't great but we did find a really neat overhang that had to be 10 feet or more deep and was filled with fish and just to the right of the overhang I found a yellowfin fringehead. Near the end of the dive I found 2 very large sea hares.

7/17/06
Jarrod Jablonski was in town teaching a Tech 1 class. Saturday the class was on the Escapade along with a number of the rest of BAUE for some recreational diving. I was diving with Kresimir. First dive was at the Outer Pinnacles and featured the usual nice vis and beautiful hydrocoral. The lack of fish here is getting scary though as I saw hardly any blue or olive rockfish.

The second dive was at Cathedrals and I got some nice pictures of Kresi, Doc Wong and Todd Lasman having fun with the swimthrough.

Photos from the day's diving can be seen here.

After the day's diving JJ and Todd Kincaid gave a very interesting talk about the recent activities of the WKPP. Truly incredible stuff.

07/09/06
Diving with Beto at Point Lobos. Nice diving we've been having lately. Vis was again terrific - probably over 60 feet out past the end of the middle reef. Not much surge either. We spent the first dive taking pictures at the top of Granite Point wall. For the second dive we mostly tooled around the area near Hole in the Wall. One of the funniest parts of the dive was when Beto found a Mosshead Warbonnet and, naturally, all I had to try and take pictures of it with was the 16mm fisheye!

Photos from the day's diving can be seen here.

07/04/06
Diving on the Escapade with Susan and Beto for the 4th of July celebration. The wind wasn't as bad as forecast so we headed south to try a new spot in Carmel called Jawdropper which is outside of Stewart's Point. Turns out to be a nice pinnacle and it didn't hurt to have (seriously) 80 foot vis. We saw quite a few large Praya sp. siphonophores plus some smaller ones I didn't recognize.

For the second dive we decided not to push our luck with the wind so we headed back into the bay to dive another new spot called Playground which is just inside of Aumentos. This was also a nice dive though we certainly didn't have the vis that we'd had in Carmel. We spent this dive working on photos for Quest.

After getting back to the dock we changed out of our drysuits and headed back out for some BBQ and fireworks. Nice show this year and we didn't even have fog to obscure it.

Photos from the day's diving can be seen here.

07/02/06
Diving with Mike Jimenez at Point Lobos. We did two nice long dives looking for nudibrachs. The first dive was on the middle reef in about 30 foot vis and the second out near Cannery Point Wall in maybe 50 foot vis. Very nice diving.

Mike got some nice macro shots.

06/17/06
With conditions being forecast to be windy Kawika and I decided on a night dive. We splashed around midnight at Shale Island. As we descended a big torpedo ray swam right underneath us. Unfortunately that was pretty much the highlight of the dive. It was quite murky and surprisingly surgy, with an annoying current to boot. We did manage to see (if not photograph) a couple of the mystery pricklebacks.

06/10/06
Beach Dive Photo Comp Day!

Diving with Kawika for the contest. We don't shore dive much so, unlike the Reggie Browns of the world we don't have pet fringeheads under contract for this event. As such we decided to take a chance on something adventurous for the first dive and went straight to Fanshell Beach. This kind of thing is usually a bad idea for a contest. Fortunately it was flat so getting in and out wasn't a problem. Unfortunately the harbor seals near the entry didn't stick around. Worse, we had to swim for a LONG time to get to even 50 feet of water where the reef got at least a little interesting. Both of us should have shot more but I did get a decent shot of a black and yellow rockfish.

For dive 2 we went to Coral Street. This time the harbor seals cooperated, at least for a while. I learned some things about how not to shoot seals but fortunately, got a couple of shots that were in focus.

To my complete shock on Sunday I learned that had won first place in 2 categories! Schweet. For my efforts I won a week at the Tawali Resort in Milne Bay. Anyone wanna go to PNG?

My entries for the day are here.

06/03/06
Diving at Whaler's cove with John Heimann and Greg Dunn. Conditions looked good at the launch ramp but the vis actually declined as we swam out towards the end of the cove. At Granite Point Wall it was barely 10 feet. Berkely had graciously loaned me his YS350s to see if those were more ergonomically friendly than the INONs. Indeed they were but I still made every imaginable mistake with the camera and didn't end up with any useable images. We called it a day after one very long dive.

05/27/06
Diving on the Escapade with John and Dionna. First dive was at Deep Ballbuster. I was still having trouble with the negative buoyancy of the camera and adding 2 decompression bottles didn't help much. At least the vis was OK - at least once we got below about 80 feet. After struggling trying to maintain trim during the dive and taking a bunch of bad pictures things got really interesting during the ascent. Somehow the faceplate and diapraghm for the second stage of my 50% mix had gone missing. Fortunately our maximum depth had only been about 135 feet so the decompression obligation wasn't too horrible. John and I passed his 50% back and forth every couple of minutes while extending our intermediate stops until we got to 20 feet where I could switch to O2. Seemed to work. Both of us felt fine after the dive.

For the second dive I borrowed some floats from Beto. These did certainly make the rig more manageable. Too bad there wasn't much to take pictures of in the murk at the shallow shale.

Pictures from the dive can be see here.

05/13/06 - 05/14/06
So I picked up my new still camera housing on Saturday at Backscatter and after Jeff walked me through how to put it together and use it I did a nice long dive to the Metridium Fields with Dionna. Then on Sunday I did a couple of dives with Kawika at East Pinnacles and the Shale Beds. Overall I think I did OK though I clearly have a lot of learning to do. I also need to do some gear tweaking as the strobes are way too heavy underwater.

Also if anybody happens to see a 14 lb weight belt at East Pinnacles (probably at about 100 feet) with blue bullet weights that would be mine. I got a bit careless getting out of the rig after the dive... :-/

http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/album45

05/07/06
Diving at Point Lobos with John and Beto. For dive one we went out into the sand channel at the beginning of the middle reef for some skills practice. For Dive two I borrowed Susan's scooter and we went out exploring in the Sherwood Forest region. Vis was at least 50 feet but it was quite surgy.

04/29/06
Diving with John Heimann on the Escapade. Was an interesting day weather-wise. The 9PM forecast the night before the charter (planned to go south) predicted 15-25 knot NW winds. Even that was an improvement over the 9AM forecast earlier on Friday which had a gale warning. Amazingly the 3AM forecast was entirely different and predicted S winds at 10 knots. Given the fluidity of the situation we decided not to press our luck too much by going way, way south but we still anchored the boat at Arc de Triomphe off of Yankee Point. Conditions in the water were generally good with 30 foot vis, no current and a fair degree of surge near the top of the reef. Sadly the right smart-grip on my camera decided not to play ball and I wasn't able to use the camera. Oh well, very nice dive anyway though evidence suggests I need some stage bottle practice. Good thing the camera wasn't working or John might have pointed it at me.

Dive two was at The Needle. As John and I decsended I thought it a bit odd that the anchor line was going straight down and was taut. Arriving at the bottom we found the anchor bouncing on top of the reef at about 110 feet - rather deeper than where we expected to find it. As we looked at each other trying to figure out what to do the anchor slipped and sailed away into the blue. We looked up to see Susan and Beto scratching their heads too. Visibilty was about 70 feet and despite being deeper than planned we had proper gasses and the scenery was beautiful. We decided not to abort the dive. After some exploring we worked our way back to The Needle proper and finished our dive on the top of the pinnacle. We regrouped there with Susan and Beto and shot a bag to deco under. With the nice vis we were able to keep the pinnacle in sight for most of the ascent so we knew we weren't drifting anywhere.

04/22/06
Diving on the newly repowered Cypress Sea with John Heimann. This was the first charter since the new engines were installed and as such there were some growing pains. The new engines will be great once everything is setup properly. Hopefully this will be soon as on this trip there were some serious issues with the exhaust system which lead to quite a cloud of noxious smoke on the back deck. On the plus side the boat is a lot faster and should be able to reach a legitimate 20 knots. Whether they actually run the boat that fast may depend on fuel consuption which was notably higher at the higher RPMs.

First dive was at Mono Lobo Wall. There was about a 10-12 foot swell which made for a lot of surge but the visibility was quite nice so we managed a nice dive anyway.

Dive two was at the East Pinnacles. By now the fumes were really getting to me. Even underwater I could still taste the stuff and was noticably more narced than usual. Again it was quite surgy but with good vis and I did managae to find a nudibranch I'd never seen before; Catriona columbiana.

04/15/06
Diving Point Lobos with John Heimann, Anibal Mata-Sol and Mark Lloyd. Turned out to be a great day of diving. Whaler's cove looked like a lake and visibility was excellent to boot. After a bit of a delay fixing the right post on my doubles we went nudibranch counting at the middle reef and Granite Point Wall. By my count we saw at least 19 different species:

Berthella californica, Cadlina luteomarginata, Cadlina modesta, Cadlina flavomaculata, Doris odhneri, Doriopsilla albopunctata, Triopha catalinae, Limacia cockerelli, Peltodoris nobilis, Geitodoris heathi, Dialula sandiegensis, Rostanga pulchra, Aldisa sanguinea, Dendronotus albus, Dendronotus frondosus, Tritonia festiva, Phidiana hiltoni, Hermissenda crassicornis and Flabellina trilineata.

Other highlights included a big wolf eel, an octopus and some large sheephead.

For dive 2 we started with some drills and then went slug hunting again on the middle reef.

Mark got some nice nudibranch pictures.

04/08/06
Diving with Mike Jimenez on the Escapade. Weather was mostly from the West leaving Monterey Bay looking mostly like a lake. Our first dive was at Aumentos. This was close enough to Point Pinos that we got a bit of surge but the visibility was great; at least 40 feet. Highlights included a nice wolf eel and 4 large sea lions that hung around for a while.Dive two was at Shale Island. We were joined by John Heimann whose buddy Ryan was sitting out due to a leaky drysuit. The plan was to look for color variations of Geitodoris heathi and Doris montereyensis as there has been some discussion of these animals on the Sea Slug Forum. We got our pictures and also had a nice dive in 20 foot vis or so. The fringeheads we've seen previously out in the open were not home.

04/01/06 - 04/02/06
I spent the weekend helping Bob Sherwood and Beto teach a DIRF class. We dove the breakwater both days with very nice conditions; 30 foot vis and calm seas. Proving that personal preference does have a place in DIR Bob showed us that whereas David Rhea always brings a spare toothpick with him on dives, that he prefers to take along an extra Caffeine Free Diet Coke.

03/25/06
Diving with Chuck and Kawika. Conditions were unexpectedly nicer than forecast. The weather was mostly coming from the west leaving the bay protected. First dive was at Ballbuster. Visibility near the surface was around 10 feet but it opened up to around 25 or so at depth. There was a bit of a current, going all the way to the bottom which was unusual. We didn't see anything out of the ordinary on the dive and the big crack featured neither a wolf eel nor an octopus. Oh well.

The second dive was at Shale Island. I spent most of the dive filming a one-spot fringehead that was out terrorizing the neighborhood. I never did figure out what it was hunting and it didn't appear to be too successful, unless its aim was to intimidate the goby and shrimp population.

03/18/06
Diving with Kawika and John in, uhhh, less than ideal conditions.

John: Well this sucks.
Me: More like this blows. Literally.
Kawika: Sucks AND Blows I think!

We tried a new spot on the deep shale. When you see more old batteries (1) than rockfish (0) it's a sign that the dive site might not be the best. The 8 foot vis and raging gale when we surfaced didn't help either.

Dive 2 was at the breakwater. Even there we had to let out nearly 300 feet of scope on the anchor line to be confident the boat would still be there when we surfaced. Despite nearly 100 minutes of bottom time we didn't manage to see much of interest. Oh well, maybe next week...

03/12/06
Point Lobos with John.

03/04/06
Diving with Kawika. The forecast looked pretty awful but conditions looked OK when we got to the ocean. Especially notable was the lack of wind. With that in mind we headed to Carmel for dive one. The swell was almost from the west so we figured we might get some protection on the south end of the bay and anchored near Thumbs Up. Vis was about 30 feet and despite some pretty serious surge we had a fun dive. It took me a while to find some interesting nudibranchs but I eventually located and Onchidoris muricata for Kawika to take pictures of. Unfortunately it was probably too small for Kawika's 100mm lens (he didn't have his new Macromate yet).

Dive two was back in the bay at Shale Island. Kawika had mentioned that he had seen several fringeheads out hunting around in the open. Sure enough he was quickly able to point out a pair of them which were terrorizing pretty much everything that moved, especially the local shrimp population. Neat stuff. Next time I'll bring my video camera.

02/25/06
Diving from the Cypress Sea again, this time with John Heimann and Mark Weitz. This was Frank Barry's day to go diving so we were going South or else. The forecast was for light South winds and a small swell in advance of a new set of storms. Our first dive was at Flintstones and was a very nice dive indeed with 50 foot vis and the usual incredible scenery. Susan and Beto saw a big ray swimming over the top of the reef but I missed it.

The wind picked up a bit prematurely so we moved back North to Thumbs Up for dive two. The vis was excellent here too. Highlights included a big wolf eel and an adult male Sheephead.

02/20/06
Soberanes Wall and Lobos Rocks with Sue and Beto.

Yes, we did get Jim's anchor back and also some nice video.

02/18/06
Today was the BAUE Barge Project. Using a combination of boat dives via Phil Sammet's RIB and shore/scooter dives we spent the day mapping and photographing the barge. I did two video dives. One with Harry Babicka and Mark Weitz and the other with Harry and Mark Lloyd. We'll have more information on these dives soon at the BAUE site.

02/12/06
Diving from the Escapade with Mike Jimenez and John Heimann. The forecast looked pretty good so we headed South. Beto and I talked Jim into Soberanes Wall, and it looked good as we pulled up. A lone kayak diver was just finishing his dive and the wind was probably about 10 knots. I jumped in first and quickly found myself well behind the boat. With some effort I made it back to the swimstep while Jim and Eric rigged a granny line. Sue and Beto jumped in too and powered their way up to the anchor line and descended. I followed and it took everything I had to jump the gap from the granny line to the anchor line. Mike was having trouble pulling himself and the camera so he aborted, as did most of the rest of the group who were watching us struggle. John (who had made it as far as the end of the granny line) and I reluctantly aborted while Jim recalled Sue and Beto.

Even the recall turned out to be difficult as several lead weights were needed to keep the hydrophone underwater. As Sue and Beto started back up the wind picked up dramatically to over 25 knots. Now the boat which had been pushed North by the current was now being pushed South with the anchor line being bent at a 90 degree angle about 20 feet down. Eventually Sue and Beto had to let go of the line due to the current and finished their ascent under a bag. Naturally the anchor was now seriously stuck and the wash rock was getting scary. We left the anchor behind for another day. Good thing the Kayaker finished his dive when he did.

We decided to do something less taxing for the second dive and settled on City Beach Reef. In good vis this is a pretty spot. Unfortuantely Mike had his 15mm fisheye lens on the camera and I quickly started seeing all sorts of interesting tiny nudibranchs; Onchidoris muricata, Aegires albopunctata, Triopha catalinae, Dendrodoris behrnsi, Dialula sandiegensis, Doris montereyensis, Geitodoris heathi, Peltodoris nobilis, Rostanga pulchra, Cadlina luteomarginata, Cadlina flavomaculata, Cadlna modesta, Doriopsilla albopuncata, Tritonia festiva, Dendronotus albus and Cuthona lagunae. What are ya gonna do?

For the second (or 3rd depending on your persepctive) we dropped anchor at Shale Island. Nothing too remarkable this time but we had better vis that usual here; probably 25 feet.

02/03/06 - 02/04/06
Diving with Kawika. Plan was to dive Saturday morning but when we met up at AWS to get fills we had a look a the forecast and buoy data and decided to go diving RIGHT NOW rather than wait til Sat morning. Still took us a while to get organized so we splashed at about 11:30 PM at the shale beds. Turned out to be a fun dive with a big school of anchovies following us around and a group of blue rockfish following (and eating) them. I spent most of the dive looking for nudibrnachs and was rewarded with Cuthona lagunae. Kawika found several snailfish.

The first dive was 90 minutes which meant we weren't jumping in for dive 2 until nearly 2:30 AM; in this case the sand near the end of the breakwater. Nothing too exciting on this on. We were back in the parking lot by around 4 and learned a lesson about Kawika's boat battery - it's too small to run the running lights for nearly 5 hours and still be able to turn the motor over! Fortunately the kicker motor is a pull-start and we didn't have to go far. We were having breakfast about the time we would have been loading for the early AM Escapade trip. Driving home when the sun is coming UP is really weird but, hey, we got our diving in before the storm.

01/28/06
Diving with John Heimann and Greg Dunn, or at least that was the plan. We got to the breakwater hoping to swim out onto the sand and look for the barge. The sound of crashing waves and the spray drifting into the parking lot quickly made me think that wasn't such a hot idea. The water didn't look too bad from a vis standpoint but I figured it surely would be stirred up on the bottom and watching students get chewed up and spit out by the ocean wasn't promising either. We decided to go hiking.

Soberanes Canyon was beautiful and, as always, the view from the top was worth the climb. We then went for lunch at the Rocky Point Restaurant.

When we got back to the breakwater we found that conditions had improved, contrary to what we were expecting from the forecast. We ran into Dionna who had also gone off for other activites rather than diving in the morning and decided we'd go back to our original plan. We suited up and swam out past the turn in the wall. Then we descended onto the sand and headed north in the general direction of the barge (though not with any real hope of finding it). I did find a Sea Mouse and several Armina californica nudibranchs. Then we headed back west to the Metridium fields and finished up in the kelp between there and the wall. Vis was about 15 feet and surge pretty neglibible. Not a bad dive really.

01/23/06
Nope, I wasn't abducted by space aliens or anything. Just very busy at work and falling way behind in my web maintenence duites. Sorry for the lack of updates. We now resume our regularly scheduled programming. I hope anyway...

01/21/06
Diving with Mike Jimenez on the Escapade. First dive was at Ballbuster. Vis was around 20 feet but it was very murky near the surface which made for very dark conditions on the bottom. No matter. Surge wasn't bad (we finally got some half-decent weather) and the metridiums were all out. The highlight of the dive was finding two Puget Sound King Crabs. Kawika had mentioned last week that he'd seen them in Monterey which is the Southern limit of their range. Funny how when you look for something you can find it.

Dive two was at Shale Island. Vis was a miserable 5-7 feet. Mike and I circumnavigated the reef and, apparently, made it back to the anchor before missing it in the murk and swimming another 100 feet before we gave up and shot a bag. Jim said that at one point they were sure we were on the line and coming up. Oh well.

01/15/06
OK, we're at over a month an counting of consecutive days with 10 foot or greater swells. Fortunately I missed a good chunk of that while on break in Colorado. Now, I'm back and suffering with the rest of the local divers. Kawika and I went diving anyway and, in the bay anyway, it wasn't that bad. The swell was mostly West so Point Pinos offered some protection. Our first dive was at Hopkins Deep which was notable only for actually being diveable. Vis was around 15 feet. We didn't see much but it beat staying home. For the second dive we went over to the shallow shale. Conditions there were really bad with 5-8 foot vis. I did find a very large pipefish in the kelp and we spent most of the dive photographing it.

01/07/06
Back from way too much time away from diving. 3 weeks! Naturally being out of practice the first thing on the agenda was a deep dive at Mt Chamberlin off of Yankee Point. Fortunately the only really stupid thing I did was to forget to hook up the plumbing on my drysuit. I HATE when that happens! Turned out to be a really neat dive anyway. I was diving with John but I'll let Beto describe the dive.

Here is my video from the dive.

12/10/05
BAUE charter with Todd Kincaid. Naturally we got Todd down to Monterey on a day with 10 foot swells at something like a 16 second interval. It seemed nice enough on the surface as there wasn't much wind but MAN was it surgy once we got to the bottom at the Outer Pinnacles. Jeesh. I did manage to find first a red brotula and then a mosshead warbonnet. Watching Mike try to take pictures of them in the huge surge was pretty funny.

Dive two was at the East Pinnacles. Surge was even worse there but it was kind of fun flying over the hydrocoral at very high speed. We found Susan and Beto at the top of the reef and spent the last 3rd fo the dive removing fishing line, the evil spiderwire kind, from the reef.

Beto shot some video video of Susan and Dave getting pushed around in the surge.

12/03/05
Diving with John on the Escapade. First dive was at Cathedrals which is a spot I haven't visted in a long time indeed. There is a great swim-through and the reef is prettier than I had remembered. We didn't see anything too unusual; a couple of large abalone and a nice school of blue rockfish. Second dive was at Shale Island. My mission was to swim around the whole thing and get a feel for the geography. This we did, though we eneded up swimming fast enough that I didn't find much in the way of unusual critters. Turns out at a nice, but not hurried, pace you can swim around the "island" in about 30 minutes and the navigation is easy enough that we managed not to get lost even though the vis was only 10-15 feet.

11/19/05
Diving with Mike Jimenez on the Escapde for an Aquan Charter. First dive was at Outer Butterfly House. Vis was around 20 feet and it was a touch surgy but we had fun getting pictures of the pretty hydrocoral. We also found a big wolf eel in a hole right near where the anchor was. For the second dive we ended up in the bay. Mike wanted to work on wide angle shots in the kelp canopy near Eric's Pinnacle never going deeper than about 20 feet. As luck would have it a (rather beat up) Mola mola paid us a visit and hung out for a while and allowed Mike to get some shots. His site is down at the moment or I'd link to the pictures.

11/16/05
Midweek insanity dive with Mike Jimenez at North Monastery. There had been some discussion of Rostaga pulchra on the Sea Slug Forum so Mike and I went looking for them. We found a few and also got a good harbor seal show. Vis around 20 feet and it was a bit surgy, especially considering our nudibranch focus, but overall a nice dive. Other highlights included a pipefish and a nice Ctenophore jelly of some sort floating next to the kelp.

11/06/05
Diving with Kawika. First dive was at the edge of East Pinnacle where we mostly hung out with the local bocaccio. Vis was nice and the swell wasn't bad at 100 feet.

It looked a bit rough to do a second, shallower dive in Carmel so we went back to the bay in hopes of some harbor seal action. Unfortuantely the water was a bright orangish green. I literally could not see my fins when I jumped in. It was a little better, though surgy at depth. We spent the dive looking for nudibranchs and other small critters up in the kelp canopy. In addition to a small Melibe leonina we found lots of Flabellina trilinata and Hermissenda crassicornis plus some kelp clingfish.

Kawika got some shots which you can see here.

10/30/05
Back again, diving with Susan and John on the Escapade. Our hope was to go Way South but the wind really kicked up south of Soberanes Point so "settled" for Flinstones, which is a pretty nice dive in 60 foot vis and a light swell. Yes, you read right, despite the big waves Saturday it had calmed down nicely over night. Highlights included yet more wolf eels, numerous egg yolk jellies, and a big school of blue rockfish.

Dive two was at the East Pinancles where we found even more wolf eels and generally enjoyed the nice scenery - at least that which wasn't covered in fishing line. In addition to all the trash the numbers of blue rockfish really seem down at this site. We did take the opportunity to remove a lot of the fishing line.

10/29/05
Diving with Susan and John on the Escapade. First dive was at Lunaticos on a mission to find some boot sponges, which we did. Seas were huge but it didn't matter much at 180 feet. Unfortunately the depth did play games with the controls on my camera and by the time I had it sorted out it was time to go up. Oh well, nice dive anyway.

Dive two was at the Outer Pinnacles in surge, current and low vis. Hidden down in the cracks it wasn't so bad and we did find 2 wolf eels. The ascent back up the line in a ripping current, knowing it was foggy on the surface wasn't so nice.

10/22/05
Shore diving with Mike again. First dive was at Stewart's point and conditions couldn't have been much nicer. In addition to flat seas we enjoyed 40 foot vis and the occasional company of a harbor seal. Mike also found a wolf eel. I was looking for nudibranchs for Mike to point his 105mm lens at but didn't find anything particularly interesting.

As we were sick of swimming we moved to the breakwater for dive two. This time I had better luck with the nudibrnachs finding a colony of Doto amyra and also several Dendronotus subramosus.

Mike's excellent pictures from the day can be found here.

10/08/05
Back at the shale beds with Kawika for some seal action. This time we brought Mike Jimenez along. Again we weren't disappointed, though the action wasn't as intense as it had been two weeks prior.

Mike got some very nice pictures.

10/01/05
Diving with Mark Weitz today as a support diver for Susan and Beto on a BAUE expedition to the Mt Chamberlin pinancle. We met Susan, Beto, Martin and Parker at their 70 foot stop and stayed with them during the deco while enjoying the nice vis and jellyfish.

Dive two was at El Paso where Mark and I again served as support divers, this time for Dionna, Ian, Harry and Nick. They came up early due to some issues with leaky drysuits but reported that the reef was worth going back to for another look.

Dive three was a fun dive at Outer Butterfly House with Susan and Beto. Despite nice visibility South of Point Lobos the water here was like soup. We had a nice dive despite this and spent some time with the big wolf eel that lives on the nice hydrocoral patch near Jim's standard anchorage.

9/24/05
Diving with Susan and Kawika at the shallow shale beds. We did two dives with the local harbor seals and much fun was had by all.

Evidence here.

09/17/05
Diving with Ian and Dionna off of the Escapade. This trip was supposed to be a Big Sur Banks trip but the weather didn't quite cooperate so we went with plan B and dove the Yankee Point area instead. Delia had found some nice pinnacles south of Flinstones and we did 2 nice T1 dives in excellent vis in about the same area.

09/10/05
Diving with Kawika. The forecast wasn't so hot and after poking our head around the corner we decided to play it safe and stay in the bay. There was lots of evidence of mola activity on the surface including several sea lions playing frisbee so we decided to give Eric's a look as this spot is often good for molas. Indeed, we saw quite a few of these bizarre animals. Sadly all of them were either already dead or already stripped of their fins and dying on the bottom. There may be nothing sadder in the world than a finless mola gasping for breath on the bottom.

Dive two was over at the shallow shale beds. Kawika reported that the previous week's dive there had featured non-stop harbor seal action. It didn't happen this time but we were visted several times by an otter who seemed to be infatuated with our fins. Certainly that alone made it a fun dive. The huge school of anchovies during the safety stop didn't hurt either.

09/03/05
Diving off of the Escapde on one of the many BAUE technical charters this fall. First dive was with Gina Castillo. Our original plan was to dive the Mt Chamberlin area but it was a tad rough so we "settled" for E3 instead. On the descent I discovered my stupid canister light wasn't working due to a flakey cord. E3 is much nicer when you have a proper light to add color to things. Oh well. Lots and lots of egg yolk jellies and the usual very pretty reef.

For dive 2 we found that we'd miscalculated the total time we had for the charter and had to do a recreational dive instead of a second technical dive and we parked the boat at Ballbuster. Gina somehow lost a fin when she jumped in so she sat out this dive. I joined Susan and Beto and we ran a search pattern under the boat looking for the fin but failed to find it. Unfortuantely this area Southeast of the pinnacle is a big boulder field and a bad place to lose a fin. We did see a small wolf eel on top of the pinnacle.

08/30/05
Back from PNG. Video and other images soon I hope.

07/31/05
Diving off of the Escapade. First dive was with Nick Radov at Outer Butterfly House. The hope was to find jellies as I'd wanted to get some shots of the numerous egg-yolk jellies we'd been seeing lately. Sadly, despite reports from the morning charter that there were lots in the area we didn't see save for some dead examples being eaten by anemones. This is still a pretty dive spot though and we did get in a nice dive.

Dive two was at the shallow shale beds where we got in some support diver practice. I was working with Josh Umstead while Nick went fun diving with Mike Jimenez and Dionna House. Nothing special to report from this one but it's always good to get some time in practicing skills.

07/23/05
Shore diving with John H and Mike J. The weather forecast looked pretty good so we headed over to Carmel and decided on Stewart's Point for the first dive. Vis didn't seem that nice as we headed out but once we dropped down it was clear that this was going to be a nice dive. Straight away I found an octopus and Mike got some shots of a cabezon. Then, as we swam further out towards the outside edge the vis really opened up and made for a magical dive. The color of the water was a beautiful cobalt blue highlighted by the gold god beams coming through the kelp and reflecting off of the big school of rockfish. All 3 of us agreeded it might have been the prettiest kelp forest dive we've ever done.

The fog rolled in and the wind and swell picked up during our surface interval so we moved over to Monterey for dive two. We ended up at Coral Street which might have been a mistake. Vis was no more than 15 feet and it was surgy enough to be distracting. Oh well, still didn't ruin the magic of the first dive.

07/16/05
Diving with Kawika and Mike J off of the Rapture. The weather looked good (albeit foggy) so we headed for Carmel. First dive was at the East Pinnacles. Surge wasn't too awful and visibility was about 20 feet. I spent the first 20 minutes of the dive shooting hydrocoral, oblivious to the egg yolk jellies in the water column that I had missed during the descent. I eventually noticed them and got a little bit of footage.

Mike tore his wrist seal before the first dive and our attempts to fix it with duct tape failed pretty badly. He got pretty wet so we dropped him off at the dock before dive 2. Kawika and I then settled on the shale beds after deciding against Ballbuster. Vis there was again around 20 feet. We didn't see anything unusual but I did spend some time shooting nudibranchs and other standard fare Monterey subjects.

07/14/05
Notice: Due to circumstances beyond our control the PNG trip has been postponed until August. :-(

We now resume your regularly scheduled Monterey diving.

07/11/05
Notice: I am leaving on Friday for a 2 week trip to Papua New Guinea so there will be no postings until I get back in early August.

07/09/05
Diving with Kawika Chetron and Mike Jimenez. Twas a bit windy so we stayed in the bay. Not much swell to speak of and it was nice and sunny. First dive was the Mating Amphtracks. I'd never seen this wreck before and it's always nice to do something new; especially in 60 foot vis! The wreck is small but did feature 3 wolf eels and was covered in Hermissenda crassicornis. I also found a small nudibranch which I think is either Adalaria jannae or Onchidoris muricata.

For our second dive we moved over to shale bed and dropped the hook at Shale Island. Vis wasn't quite as nice as at the Amphtracks but still a very respectable 35-40 feet. I found a nice Dentronotus subramosus and we saw several different kinds of fringheads. Near the end of the dive I found a pair of Octopuses which appeared to be engaged in mating behavior.

Mike got some nice pictures which you can see here.

Kawika got a really pretty image of a Hermissenda.

07/03/05
Diving with several buddies on the afternoon Escapade trip. First dive was with Susan Bird and Anita Buettner at Aumentos. Vis was decent and we had a nice tour of the reef highlighted by a big school of blue rockfish.

For the second dive we moved to the shallow shale beds and we rotated dive buddies pairng me with Nicolas Gascon. Not much structure here but we did find an old fishing rod which I sent up on a lift bag. Also two fringeheads and a sea hare which is something I haven't seen in Monterey in a long time.

07/02/05
Diving with Dave off of the Escapade. First dive was at Butterfly House. Sometimes a video is worth a thousand words (41.6 MB, Quicktime MPEG4).

http://baue.org/videos/butterflyhouse.html

The second dive was at the Deep Shale. Conditions were nice here too, though there was a bit of a current. Once we decided we were going to drift and not come back to the boat it was a very pleasnant dive with lots of fish, metridiums on the ledges, several Tochina tetraqueta nudibranchs and even a small wolf eel.

06/25/05
We had a good group of 6 one the Escapade Saturday for some exploration diving; myself, Dave, Susan, Beto, Nick and Dionna. The plan was to explore the area Beto is calling Mt. Chamberlin which is a large pinnacle north of Flintstones. Naturally Dave had never seen this spot before and was worried that it might be another "Sammet Spire". Exactly why this was is unclear as the possibility of a dive anywhere near Flintstones being a bust is about zero.

Weather was insanely great with a smallish NW swell, sunny skies and hardly any wind. Better still the water was a completely different color than last week when the visibility was best measured in inches rather than feet. Visibility at Mt Chamberlin was easily 50 feet and it certainly is a reef worthy of naming after El Jefe. Dave and I meandered down a canyon that started at about 100 feet and hit the wall at around 150. The canyon was full of gorgonians and the wall a bright pink mass of Corynactis. We also saw a basket star sitting on top of a gorgonian. The highlight for me was finding a very large nudibranch which I think might be Dialula lentiginosa. This beast was nearly a foot long. If it is D. lentiginosa that's a range extension all the from BC. Pretty remarkable for an animal as conspicuous as this. Now if only I could remember to focus on getting good images of unusual things and and not rush off too quickly to the next thing. :-/

After the nudibranch we headed west until we hooked up with Sue and Beto who were scootering up and down the wall. The area where we found them featured all sorts of interesting topological features with some nice Elephant Ear sponges adding contrast to the Corynactis. During our Deco a bird made repeated visits to us. Seeing a bird fly by underwater makes you wonder if you're narced until you remember you're at 20 feet. :-p

For the second dive we moved up to Cypress Point and the Fanshell Beach pinnacles. Beto wanted me to lead the group to the swimthrough. Problem is I didn't really remember where it was. Fortunately Captain Jim put the hook right next to it. Better still just on the other side of the swimthrough we found a Giant Pacific Octopus back in a crack. 5 minutes into the dive we could have called it on account of already having seen everything.

Images from the video here. Not my best work but at least the video lights worked this week.

06/19/05
Diving with Dave Chamberlin from the Escapade. Winds were light and it was foggy, swells running about 7-9 feet from the NW. The water was a nasty greenish-grey color. We figured the Outer Pinnacles to be our best bet for clean water and dropped the hook there. Visibility at the surface was less than 5 feet but it opened up to about 10 feet at depth. Even in the murky darkness the Outer Pinnacles are a beautiful place and Dave and I made a leisurly circuit around one of the high spots admiring the hydrocoral.

We moved back to the bay for dive 2 in search of better vis. As it was still foggy we decided against more exposed spots in boat traffic and dropped the hook near the anchor farm on the shale beds. Vis was a bit better; maybe 15 to 20 feet on the bottom. Highlights included 2 flatworms I've never seen before. One was surely Eurylepta californica. The other I can't identify. It was cream colored, about 3" long, had dark tentacles, a dark line around the margin and a dark line running down its back. It did not have the spots charactersistic of Psudoceros montereyensis. Too bad I didn't have a camera. Oh well. Other highlights included an electric ray, an overhang filled with vermilion rockfish and 2 Tochuina tetraqueta nudibranchs.

06/08/05
Diving with Mike Jimenez and Dionna House at the Breakwater for long-overdue midweek night dive. All the weather was from the West so the water was very calm. Unfortunately there was a lot of particulate matter in the water, probably due to the lingering effects of last weekends big waves. Oh well, visibility was around 15 feet and that was fine for what we were doing. My primary mission was to get images of Polycera atra which I had see a week ago with Kawika. Mike, with his spiffy 100mm macro lens, was happy to oblige. We also saw a pipefish and got another image of the strange prickle back I keep seeing on night dives.

06/05/05
Was diving yesterday with John and Beto and Point Lobos. Susan was kind enough to lend me her scooter (probably as part of some conspiracy to get me to buy one) so that I could keep up with Beto and John. Thanks Susan!

Meanwhile the weather forecast, well, the weather forecast sucked;

.SUN...NW WINDS 20 TO 30 KT...WITH GALE FORCE GUSTS TO 35 KT POSSIBLE. COMBINED SEAS 10 TO 13 FT WITH A DOMINANT PERIOD OF 8 SECONDS. PATCHY FOG IN THE MORNING.

Hmmmm. :-O

History shows that it's always worth looking at the water anyway. I got to Lobos a bit early and stopped at Monastery for a look at the waves. It was bad, but not quite at the scary stage and there weren't any whitecaps in Carmel Bay, at least not yet. Inside the park Whaler's didn't look so bad at all and while it looked a bit rough outside it didn't look _that_ bad. We went diving anyway and scootered out along Granite Point wall in the direction of Mono Lobo Wall. Visibility was quite good; 40 feet or more; once we got out past the middle reef. Amazingly it wasn't particularly surgy either. Beto found a Cabezon eating an Abalone and we saw quite a few vermilion and canary rockfish along with the usual suspects. I've still got a lot to learn with the scooters but it is amazing how much ground you can cover with minimal effort. Must ... resist ... buying ... another ... expensive toy with o-rings....

During the surface interval Chris Cali came over and told us that his group had seen a very large GPO out at the end of the middle reef which gave us a good objective for dive two. Chris had described it as being in a crack 55 feet of water on the east side of the reef just south of the big see-through hole at the end. Sure enough, exactly as described there was, indeed, a very large octopus back in a crack. I think this is the shallowest I've ever seen one here. Thanks Chris!

Even as the wind picked up in the afternoon Whaler's stayed rather protected and scooter and stage bottle recovery went smoothly. On the drive out I glanced at Monastery and it looked UGLY. Amazing as it's only right around the corner from where we were enjoying some very nice diving. Just goes to show that it's always best to go look no matter what, especially if one of your buddies might have Lobos reservations.

05/29/05
Despite arriving in Monterey early for the awards ceremony we somehow botched the directions (made worse by the truly awful map) and got there late. Kawika managed 2 third places in Restricted Digital Diver and Restricted Wide Angle. Not too bad and it scored him a nice coffee table book about Papua New Guinea. Mike Jimenez did well in the Restricted Macro category taking both first and third.

Following the award ceremony we re-grouped for a night dive at the Breakwater. The tide was going out which made the first half of our dive a drift dive; somewhat unusual for the Breakwater. Visibility was reduced due to the outgoing tide but was still a reasonable 20 feet or so. Highlights included a couple of Sea Mice (Mouses?), a large Plainfin Midshipmen, a Brown Irish Lord and two nudibranchs I had trouble IDing. Naturally I didn't have a camera and Kawika was still setup for wide angle. The first intersting slug was an aeolid and after consulting with Dave Behrens and Alicia Hermosillo I still don't know what it was. Might have been Cerberilla mosslandica. The second was really tiny and now belived to be Polycera atra. Both are firsts for me in this area. Amazing how you can still see new things after nearly 1000 dives in the local waters.

05/28/05
Today is the annual Beach Dive Photo Competition. I don't shoot stills (and have learned not to even bother trying just for contests) so I'm modeling for Kawika. In what has to be a first for Monterey area photo contests the weather turned out to be spectacular. We headed to Monastery which we figured would be the best bet for wide angle. Indeed conditions were great with only a hint of wind chop and no swell to speak of. Visibility was at least 40 feet. We started out at the North end trying to get some blue rockfish shots and then spent some time trying to get the classic "Urticina with diver and kelp" shot. Kawika got a brief glimpse of a Mola but sadly it didn't stick around for a portrait.

For dive two we moved to the South end where, if anything, conditions were even better. On this dive we spent most of our time getting shots of reef and diver with a kelp forest background. Kawika also had a go at trying some over-under shots right in the surf line, which should give you an idea of how nice it was.

05/22/05
Diving from the Escapade as part of the Subtidal X-Pedition charter. The plan was to head south for some mixed T1 and T2 diving but the weather didn't cooperate. Swells were from the NW at around 7-9 feet and the forecast was for 35 knot winds. As such we stayed in the Bay and splashed at the Mile Buoy for dive 1. For the first dive I was diving with Joe T. The plan was for a nice leisurely 40 minute bottom time. The water looked pretty murky at the surface but cleared up very nicely below 50 feet. Visibility at depth was easily 50 feet. We didn't see anything especially unusual on the dive; one wolf eel and a couple of juvenile yelloweye rockfish but I did manage to retrive a fin that Harry Babicka had lost a few months ago. We called the dive early at 30 minutes as both of use had slightly leaky suits and were getting cold.

Dive 2 was with Maciek, Gina Castillo and Susan Grant as Joe sat the second dive out. By now the wind was really howling. Fortunately the shale beds were a bit protected which enabled us to get in another nice dive at the Old Anchor Farm. Vis was again very agreeable below 50 feet. We saw a wolf eel in the chain pile and Gina found a Tochuina tetraqueta nudibranch.

05/15/05
Diving with Mike Jimenez and John Heimann. My nose was running like a faucet and I wasn't feeling particularly good so we scrapped our initial plan (Monastery) and stayed at the Breakwater instead. First dive was out at the metridium fields. Lots of squid eggs and pretty decent vis (about 40'). The water was about 49F at depth but nearly 59F back in the shallows where it was almost like diving Catalina what with opaleye, calico bass and the nice vis.

Dive two was along the wall. Highlights included a new nudibranch for me; Aglaja occeligera, a Monkeyface Prickleback, a wolf eel and lots of Dendronotus iris. Nice diving all around.

Mike got some pictures which you can see here.

05/08/05
Outer Ballbuster with John Heimann.

05/07/05
Diving with Kawika and Mike from Kawika's boat.

04/30/05
Diving at the Farallones with Kawika, Chuck and John H. Still frames from this trip and last week's here.

04/24/05
Diving at the Farallones with Kawika, Chuck and John H. Pictures from Kawika here, my video here.

04/16/05
Diving with Kawika. Topside conditions were much better than last weekend but the water still looked really green. First dive was on the Deep Shale again. Unlike last week the visibility stayed awful all the way through the water column. Despite this the area offers some nice diving with rich invertebrate life.

Dive number two was at Hopkins Deep Reef. We spent the dive in one spot working on a pre-planned picture. Happily that spot also featured an Aegiris albopunctata - only the second one I've ever seen. Vis again was pretty awful but Kawika did manage to get one pretty good picture of me. Not sure what happened to my eyes though!

04/10/05
Diving with Kawika. Conditions only looked good by comparison to Saturday which was truly awful. I believe the buoy was reading over 20 feet at one point. It had diminished to about 10 feet by the time we got into the water but it still didn't look too good. At least it wasn't windy. First dive was a new spot on the deep shale. Visibility was highly variable depending on depth. The first 30 feet were typical spring bloom miso-soup. I could see my fins but that was about it. Then below that the temperature dropped from about 56F to around 47F and the visibility increased to around 30 feet. Sadly by the time we reached the bottom the stirred up sediment again reduced the visibility to around 10 feet. We had a fairly reasonable dive anyway but then called it a day as the wind was picking up and reports from in closer were, to say the least, not promising. Maybe next week...

03/27/05
Diving with John Heimann at Point Lobos. Plan was for a long dive out past the Three Sisters. In retrospect that's too far a swim with stages and camera. Maybe scooters aren't so crazy after all... Anyway it was a bit rougher than yesterday but vis was easily 50 feet at depth. I was a bit winded as we got further out and probably just a bit hypercapnic as well. Once I realized this I stopped John and we spent a few minutes admiring the scenery before slowly working our way back. During the deco I found a pipefish which was the only really unusal thing we saw. Nice dive overall (and number 1000 for John!) but not one I'll be duplicating. Whew!

03/26/05
Diving with Dionna and Maciek Arkuszewski. Maciek is a T1 diver from LA. Weather conditions were great so we naturally headed for Flintstones. There was a slight S current and about a 6 foot long period-swell but very little wind. Vis was good and we made a tour of the NW side of the pinnacle. During the dive I spotted one of the imfamous O2 bottles. I wanted to show it to Maciek and Dionna but dared not touch it to brush off the sand so that they could see what it was! We also saw a nice school of blue rockfish, lush gorgonians and all the usual Flintstones suspects.

For dive 2 Dionna decided to play with the scooters Andrew had brought with him so it was just Maciek and me. Due to time constraints we had to dive back in the bay. Ballbuster was occupied so we splashed at Hopkins Deep Reef. This isn't an especially exciting dive for local divers but Maciek is from LA where Metridiums are rare so he was happy. Highlights included a large sheephead and another nice school of blue rockfish.

I got some nice topside images of the day's events which can be seen here.

03/19/05
Diving on the Escapade with Dionna. Strange weather conditions today. We hit the leading edge of the storm. Storms often have a counter-clockwise rotation and the weather can be from the South when they first hit the coast. That was the case today with a big SW swell and S-SW winds. Fortunately the Monterey Peninsula offers shelter from southerly weather and the bay looked like a lake.

First dive was at Aumentos, more or less. The anchor dragged before the first dive team caught it and fixed it onto the reef. As a result we were on the outer edge of Aumentos with no more than 8-10 feet of relief in 80 feet of water. The reef isn't as pretty here but we had good vis and a reasonable dive nonetheless.

Dive 2 was at the Old Anchor Farm. A cruise ship accidentally re-located the anchors but this site still has some