Started at the MAST, and headed down to the carousel boat. I'd heard rumor of a juvenile wolfie down there and wanted to see if I could find it. No success, but there were tons of other critters around. Vis was in the 30-40 foot range, and there was still some ambient light from the last of the daylight. I kicked around for a few minutes, then headed south at a depth of about 70 feet. On my way across to the south bottle field I found numerous octos, gunnels, bay pipefish ... even a stubby squid ... in the mud or sheltering in the occasional shell or bottle, or sitting on a piece of kelp or seaweed. There was lots to take pictures of, and I took my time going across. The south bottle field was ALIVE ... by the time I got there, full darkness had set in, and the place was hopping. Everywhere I looked there were gunnels swimming about, little octos on walkabout, many small fish swimming around, even the occasional nudibranch to be found. There was a juvenile wolfie ... it's head barely larger than my thumb ... hiding in a pipe. At one point an octopus decided to go check him out, and I had to wait for the octo to move away before I could get a clear shot of the little wolfie (and then wait for the silt to clear around the pipe opening). There was a grunt sculpin on eggs inside a broken bottle. At nearly an hour into the dive ... and several minutes into deco ... I had to finally head up shallower. I barely stopped at my little rock reef, but it's loaded with small things right now ... crabs, gunnels, sailfin sculpins, perch, and small rockfish. It's quite the community. Eventually ... at about 70 minutes ... I made it to about 25 feet, where I found the first of two lumpsuckers for the dive ... my first lumpie sightings of the season. I tarried for a while and took a few shots, then headed on up toward the beach, finding another smaller lumpie at about the 15 foot range. I still had about 3 minutes of deco to deal with, so this was a great way to do it.
Ended the dive at about 80 minutes and 112 pictures. Here's a few of my faves ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
