Monterey & Environs January 20-23 2008

[dwashbur]

Somebody said they wanted to hear my reports about this trip. We did 7 dives in 3 1/2 days (we're dived out right now!), and since I share regular reports of our dives with the local dive club back in Idaho, I'm happy to share them here, as well. I'll just post the first one tonight because I'm still pooped from the drive back to Washington, but I'll put more up tomorrow under this same thread.

21 January 2008 "Down In Monterey"

With apologies to Eric Burdon...

Anyway, we arrived in Monterey this afternoon and made our first foray
under the waves a
few hours later. It wound up being a night dive because we had to wait
for the motel people
to get our room ready, and we had to fill our tanks. Our shop in
Bremerton had advised us
to drive down here with not more than about 1000 psi in the tanks because
of having to go
over a couple of passes. So we didn't get in the water until 5:17 PM.
The tide was way out,
and the plan was to swim out a little ways, drop, and follow the rocks of
the breakwater as
far as we felt like, air consumption permitting. There was also a bit of
a storm kicking up, so
the waves were a good 3 feet high at times, but weren't a problem because
we were able to
time the wave sets and get out far enough to put our fins on, then our
surface swim took us
diagonally across the waves. When we descended we were still only in
about 9 feet of
water, but there were sea stars and little shells all over the place, so
we started snapping
pictures and headed toward the rocks. The surge was throwing us around a
little, and we
actually wound up getting fairly negatively buoyant so we wouldn't get
thrown into the rocks.
We found lots more sea stars, crabs of every shape and size, and a wide
variety of rockfish,
as well as several kinds of little snails, and lots of orange cup coral,
which is one of
Monterey's premier inhabitants. There were patches of bull kelp here and
there along the
rocks as we moved out to about 37 feet, and it was funny to see the young
rockfish hiding in
the big leaves.

We came across a few painted greenlings and several black-eyed gobies, and
I finally
found a nudibranch. Then both girls started waving their lights at me.
Right below an
enormous gumboot chiton was one of the biggest painted greenlings we've
ever seen. The
amazing thing was, it wasn't moving, no matter how close we got. I came
up too it and saw
why: its right eye was gone. Who knows what happened, because the other
eye was
bulging a lot more than it should, so it's possible the poor thing was
totally blind. It didn't
move until we bumped it. I don't know if it will be able to survive or
not.

Malinda indicated she was a turnaround on her air, so we started back the
way we had
come, though we moved away from the rocks a little to explore the sandy
area bordering
them. We hadn't gone far when Malinda motioned that she was having ear
trouble. We
were making our way to shallower water, but it wasn't sloping fast enough,
and she
motioned again that she couldn't clear one of her ears. I asked if she
wanted to ascend and
she said yes, so we all joined hands and surfaced. It was a long swim in,
but we passed the
time enjoyably talking about all the neat new critters we had seen. The
dive duration was
49 minutes, visibility was about 15.

[nice-diver]

I got to dive Monterey in mid october and the viz was an inch; best diving...my bottom

[BASSMAN]

Great report, thanks Dave!


Keith.

[dwashbur]

I got to dive Monterey in mid october and the viz was an inch; best diving...my bottom

You must've either caught it on a bad day or gone to a really bad place, because we had good viz the whole trip. Here's the report on our second and third dives:

Dive 1:

Date: 21 January 2008
Location: Breakwater Cove, Monterey Bay, California
Divers: Dave, Kathy & Malinda Washburn
Conditions: Sunny air temp 68
Water temp: 61 surface, 51 depth
Time in: 1:55 PM PST
Duration: 79 minutes
Max depth: 31 feet
Visibility: 20-25 feet

The surface was almost flat, so entry was much easier than the day before.
The sunshine
made for a pleasant trudge down to the beach. Our plan this dive was to
head out on a
compass heading toward some kelp beds we had seen from our staging area in
the parking
lot, and just play around in that general direction. The bottom slopes
very gradually, so it
was a fair snorkel just to get to about 10 feet. In addition, there are
big sand ridges along
the bottom, so every so often, even though it was getting down to 8-10
feet, I found my fins
dragging when I went vertical. In any case, we found a likely spot with
some nice big rock
formations and dropped. At once we started finding little fish, anemones
of every shape and
size, Monterey's famous orange cup coral, and at least two flavors of sea
urchins. We
worked our way further out toward the kelp, and it seemed that on every
other rock pile
Kathy found another Monterey nudibranch (maybe that's why they're called
Acanthodoris
*montereyensis*?). Further on, Malinda spotted a nudibranch about 3
inches long that we
had never seen before. It was white and shaggy but didn't look like the
average shaggy
mouse. We took several pictures but still haven't been able to nail it
down. Malinda also
found at least 3 new species of hermit crabs for her growing collection,
and a wide variety of
rockfish played tag with us through the whole dive. We also found a huge
cabezon, just
sitting there when when Kathy reached out and touched him, and on the side
of the next
rock we found a bright red juvenile cabezon. He was a little more
skittish, but still not very
interested in moving.

A little farther on, out on a small sand flat, Kathy got frantic and
pointed at a starfish with an
amorophous blob attached to its side. Sure enough, it was a baby octopus.
We played with
it for a while; of course, it inked us and tried to get away, but we
stayed with it and had a
good laugh when it tried to hide under yet another starfish (I neglected
to mention that bat
stars were EVERYWHERE, littering the bottom and the rocks like cast-off
garbage). But the
best laugh of the day, quite possibly the second funniest thing I have
seen while diving,*
was when he kicked up a little blade shrimp about and inch and a half
long. That's not all
that funny, except that the shrimp jumped up and landed on Malinda's mask,
right between
her eyes. Watching her try to cross her eyes to get a glimpse of it had
me laughing so hard
I couldn't take a picture. She did a no-no and held her breath as long as
she could, waiting
for me to get a picture, but couldn't maintain and let her breath out.
The bubbles knocked
the shrimp off. Oh well, we all have a vivid image in our minds that
we'll carry for a long
time.

The dive shop had shorted Malinda's tank, so she and I had traded tanks
since I use air
more slowly than she does. Reluctantly, at around 50 minutes into the
dive, I signaled that I
had reached turnaround. We reversed course, waving goodbye to the
octopus, and started
back. For part of the journey we followed an old underwater pipe about 8"
in diameter. As
we went along, Kathy moved a piece of kelp on the pipe and discovered a
cluster of the
most fascinating tunicates we've ever seen. They were a little bigger
than grapes, and each
one had a couple of bright orange stripes inside a transparent body.
We've learned that
they're called lightbulb tunicates, which is quite appropriate. We
continued to work our way
back in, staying down as long as we could because there are rock clumps
with critters all
over them clear up to shore. Basically, we quite literally kept exploring
until we ran out of
water!

*The funniest thing I have seen on a dive happened back in December at Cove 2 when
we were diving
with our friend John from Michigan, and that Red Irish Lord guarding his
eggs lunged up
and bit Malinda's hand. I still chuckle every time I think of that.

Dive 2:

Date: 21 January 2008
Location: Breakwater Cove, Monterey Bay, California
Divers: Dave, Kathy & Malinda Washburn
Conditions: Rain, air temp 68
Water temp: 55 surface, 52 depth
Time in: 5:54 PM PST
Duration: 51 minutes
Max depth: 41 feet
Visibility: 10-15 feet

If you like invertebrates, this is a good place to go. We have found no
less than 5 different
colors of tube-dwelling anemones, from deep purple to bright orange. It's
amazing. For this
night dive we swam further out along the breakwater rocks and dropped in
about 20 feet of
water. We were immediately surrounded by more rockfish than we've ever
seen before, and
more varieties than we could count. We started working our way out,
varying our depth by
as much as 10 feet at a time to find the best nooks and crannies where
critters might be
hanging out. We found at least 2 new kinds of crabs (hi, Joe!), and a
beautiful new
nudibranch. We saw 3 of them, none more than about an inch long, but they
are bright pink
with tall, flapping cerata of a lighter pink. It's known as a Hopkins'
Rose, and we fell in love.
Further back in a deep crevice, we spotted another of Monterey's most
famous inhabitants:
a large monkey-faced eel. We could only see his head, he was pretty well
hidden, but
Malinda managed to get a great picture. We discovered later that, like
the wolf eel of Puget
Sound, it's not actually an eel but a fish, specifically a prickleback.
That's okay, the locals
can call it Willoughby McDougall for all I care, we got to see one! Soon
enough, Kathy
reached turnaround and we started back. Malinda was also having trouble
with her feet
trying to float, even at 40 feet, and her ankles were starting to hurt.
Apparently this just
wasn't her day, because we hadn't been on the way back more than a couple
of minutes
when, for no apparent reason, her weight belt came off. She tried several
ways to put it
back on, but it wasn't working, so we just surfaced. She got the belt
back on and we surface
swam back in. Along the way Kathy and I did some snorkeling with our
lights along the
rocks, where I found one of the omnipresent scalyhead sculpins. Then
without warning,
Kathy swung her light around and it landed on an enormous pinkish worm, at
least 2 feet
long and about an inch across at its thickest point, swirling through the
water. That's the
only way I can describe it. It was coiled in a spiral shape and moved in
a corkscrew motion
that was mesmerising. We watched in awe for almost a minute before it
disappeared
between a couple of rocks. Malinda was far ahead of us, nearly to shore,
so she didn't see
it. We knew she'd be sorry, so I did my best to get pictures. I got one
decent one, that will
appear on the usual site when I get these pictures up. It's going to be a
few days, because
we're off to dive again!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[al NDOF]

Great report, a very enjoyable read; thanks for sharing. :wav:
al

[nice-diver]

I got to dive Monterey in mid october and the viz was an inch; best diving...my bottom

You must've either caught it on a bad day or gone to a really bad place, because we had good viz the whole trip. Here's the report on our second and third dives:

We did the channel islands for three days and the boat stayed behind the islands out of the weather. We looked at Monastary beach, huge brown wave, we finally tried the breakwater where the recent storms still had the water stirred up, but it was our one chance on the way home.

[LCF]

Did you guys get to dive anywhere but the Breakwater while you were there?

If not, that's too bad; the structure and the life at Lobos were much more interesting, at least to me; and South Monastery was a fantastic dive as well, although the exit is trying.

We also did a day of boat diving, and the pinnacles out in the bay are breathtakingly colorful, with the soft corals in pink and white and yellow, and the kelp waving in the surge.

Monterey has some incredible diving.

[dwashbur]

Did you guys get to dive anywhere but the Breakwater while you were there?

Funny you should ask...

Dive 1:

Date: 22 January 2008
Location: Old Cannery Pipeline, Monterey Bay, California
Divers: Dave, Kathy & Malinda Washburn
Conditions: sunny, air temp 65
Water temp: 57 surface, 51 depth
Time in: 2:20 PM PST
Duration: 90 minutes (you read that right)
Max depth: 40 feet
Visibility: 25-30 feet

A popular shore dive destination in Monterey Bay is an area called the
metridium field. It's a
huge rock patch that is covered with giant plumose anemones, Metridium
gigantum or
something like that, and lots of other critters like little octopus hang
around it. To get to it,
you follow a big pipeline that used to drain one of the canneries on the
waterfront; when you
get to the end of the pipe, you go another 100 yards or so and there it
is. Sounds easy.

Well, it probably is easy, unless you're like us and just can't resist all
the cool stuff along the
way. We never made it to the metridium field. There were so many big
rock formations,
kelp beds and sunken concrete blocks out there, to say nothing of all the
neat critters living
on the pipe itself, we took our time and explored as far as we could get
on the air we had.
We found lots of big rockfish, tiny nudibranchs, an unbelievable variety
of crabs, a
burrowing shrimp, Kathy found herself a huge Giant Keyhole Limpet - there
was just too
much to see. Maybe we'll get to the metridiums next trip, but knowing us,
I doubt it. Truth
be told, I didn't really expect to get there today, because I know myself
and my buddies. We
ran the full gamut of critter sizes, too, from a moss crab whose claw-span
had to be 18
inches and a copper rockfish at least two feet long, to a very young
Monterey nudibranch
that couldn't have been more than 3/8 of an inch long. We also discovered
the incredible
variety of snails they have here, and Malinda found lots more hermit crabs
to play with. At
one point when we were all at various places on a large rock formation,
she looked up and
saw a diving duck of some kind go speeding past her.

On the way back, Kathy made yet another discovery: our very first bay
pipefish. He was
TINY! He was maybe 6 inches long, and about as thick as a piece of yarn.
Kathy had one
of the cameras today and was trying to get pictures of him, so I put my
hand out and he
swam right into it, where he sat while she snapped a good one.

As we got to shallower water, I noticed on my computer that we were at 87
minutes.
Malinda came over to me and motioned to go up. I signaled no, and pointed
to the time on
my computer and held up three fingers. She nodded and we continued. At
89 minutes we
pretty well ran out of water, so Kathy and I held our arms down as far as
we could to keep
the computers going and get our 90 minute mark. Fun!

Dive 2:

Date: 22 January 2008
Location: Old Cannery Pipeline, Monterey Bay, California
Divers: Dave & Malinda Washburn
Conditions: light rain, air temp 65
Water temp: 53 surface, 51 depth
Time in: 8:24 PM PST
Duration: 46 minutes
Max depth: 18 feet
Visibility: 10-15 feet

Kathy stayed behind with a headache. I probably should have, but Malinda
really wanted to
go, and I'm such a sucker for those big blue eyes. Hey, it's a dad thing.
We wanted to go to
wharf #2, where there are supposed to be loads of nudibranchs on the
pilings, but we were
told by the local shops that we needed to get permission from the
harbormaster before
diving there. Where the heck the harbormaster can be found, we still
don't know. We
wandered around where they said we should find him/her/it for a while
without success, and
finally decided to go back to the pipeline.

Although the waves weren't much worse than they were during the day, the
surge seemed
to be much heavier. Maybe we just noticed it more, but we were getting
thrown around quite
a bit. It was really frustrating for Malinda, especially when she was
trying to take pictures.
About midway through the dive she found a little yellow-edged cadlina on a piece of kelp,
but couldn't get a picture because the surge was waving the kelp back and
forth. I finally
grabbed it and held it still while she snapped a picture. A little way
into the dive I found a
new nudibranch for us, one that we still haven't been able to identify.
Malinda found more
hermit crabs, and we both found lots more varieties of snails. There were
more rockfish out,
as well as the occasional perch, and she found some kind of 2 inch long
bug, looked like an
amphipod of some sort, clinging to a kelp strand. We had already decided
to make this a
shorter dive, and I told her at the beginning that I would probably call
turnaround at about
20 minutes. At 20 minutes we still hadn't gotten very far, so I changed
that to 30 minutes.
So at that time I signaled turnaround and she agreed. We started back,
drifting back and
forth over the pipe - it's about 3 feet in diameter and varies from almost
completely buried to
about 18" off the bottom - just taking it easy. She found a gap in the
pipe and looked in, and
there was another of Monterey's famous monkey-faced eels. She tried at
least a dozen
times to get enough light in there for the camera to focus, but by this
time the surge was
tossing her back and forth to a ridiculous degree and she was getting
angry. I managed to
help with my light and holding some things out of the way, and she finally
got a picture. A
few seconds later she indicated she wanted to go up. We were only at
about 15 feet so I
knew it was safe even if we rushed it a little, so we ascended. She said
she gave up
because the surge was driving her crazy. She was sure her picture wasn't
going to come
out. Back at the motel, I'm delighted to say she was wrong about that.
It's an excellent
picture and she's going to hang on to it for a photo contest somewhere.
Me, I'm still trying to
identify that nudibranch.................

[cardiver]

Where are the pics???? Sounds like you guys had a great time down there!

[dwashbur]

Where are the pics???? Sounds like you guys had a great time down there!

We did have a great time. The pix are at my photobucket site,

s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb133/dwashbur/

Everything there is sorted by location and date; the Monterey ones are listed as breakwater + date and number as appropriate and Monterey pipeline + date and number. I haven't finished processing the ones from Point Lobos and Wharf #2 yet, hopefully in a couple of days. Here are the reports on those two:

Date: 23 January 2008
Location: Point Lobos Marine Reserve, near Carmel, CA
Divers: Dave, Kathy & Malinda Washburn
Conditions: partly cloudy, air temp 64
Water temp: 51-54 degrees
Time in: 12:23 PM PST
Duration: 102 minutes
Max depth: 17 feet
Visibility: 35-40 feet

Everybody told us if we were going to Monterey, we HAD to get to Point
Lobos. So we did.
We presented our C-cards at the gate, paid the minimal fee, got the maps
and other info,
and headed in to the parking area. We saw the sign that said no dogs were
allowed, and
we already had our two in the car, so we agreed we would keep them in the
car and out of
sight, presumably it wouldn't be a problem if they didn't get out. I
walked up to the top of the
little point by the parking area and took a look at the rocks sticking out
of the water just
beyond it, where one of the dive shop people had said there was a nice
pinnacle where we
could find some good stuff. The surf was crashing against them like
nobody's business, and
it was doing the same thing at the mouth of the cove where you have to
enter (known as
Whalers Cove). I took a look at that surf and said "uh-uh." We stayed
inside the cove
where the water was calm and clear. That meant we didn't get to any
depth, which also
meant a longer dive. And we didn't miss a thing. The clear water, the
great viz, and just the
sheer splash of color was astonishing from the beginning. True to our
philosophy "Think
Small," we found four new kinds of nudibranchs, a couple of them less than
half an inch
long. We also found several little kelpfish, something we've never seen
before. Of course,
there were also huge rockfish, some really big perch, and a nice big
monkey-faced eel, but
the really good stuff was small. We found some old friends, including the
Noble Sea Lemon
(a nudibranch), and a couple of those were enormous, at least 4 inches
long. Colorful
anemones were all over the place, and the variety of colorful seaweed kept
our eyes and
cameras busy. There were supposed to be some leopard sharks in that part
of the cove,
but we didn't come across any. We explored as long as we could, but
eventually started to
get cold, so we took a heading and started toward the parking lot. We
found lots more neat
fish and nudibranchs along the way, and it was only with great sadness
that we finally exited
the water. We know we want to go back to Monterey, and we will definitely
be back to this
place.

Oh yes, the dogs: we had to check in at the gate as we left, and when the
ranger saw them
she said "You had a dog all this time???" We said, they stayed in the
car, we hadn't known
they weren't allowed. She said it was a good thing a ranger didn't come
down to the parking
lot and find them, because even being in the car, that would have been a
$400 fine!
Something to keep in mind next time...


Date: 23 January 2008
Location: Wharf #2, Monterey, California
Divers: Dave, Kathy & Malinda Washburn
Conditions: overcast, air temp 64
Water temp: 55 surface, 52 bottom
Time in: 5:18 PM PST
Duration: 63 minutes
Max depth: 20 feet
Visibility: 10-15 feet

We had been trying to get to this wharf the whole trip, because we had
heard it could be a
good place to find some Spanish Shawl nudibranchs. The hardest part was
finding the
place, because it's a little weird to get to. Add the fact that you have
to check with the
harbormaster and get permission to dive under it, and it almost seemed
like more of a
headache than it would be worth. But we jumped through the hoops, made an
impossibly
long walk to the water, and surface swam out along a sea wall to the point
where the pilings
began. We moved to the first piling and descended. It was funny; we
dropped in 20 feet of
water, and as we worked our way out along the wharf, the water actually
got shallower. Go
figure. In any case, as we studied the piling while we dropped, and the
sea wall behind us,
the old Beatles song "Strawberry Fields Forever" started going through my
head, because
everything, and I do mean everything, was covered with little strawberry
anemones. They
were like a ground cover plant in their thickness, it was amazing. We
started moving among
the pilings and found all sorts of little fish, and more kinds of tiny
shrimps than we could
count. The pilings beyond that first one were heavily coated with layers
of bright red lacy
bryozoan; in several places, big chunks had fallen off the pilings and
were laying like old
lumber all over the bottom. We played with the fish and shrimps for quite
a while, and at
one point Kathy found a totally new kind of fish. It was a nice
pinkish-orange with stripes
running its full length. It kept trying to find an opening in the
bryozoan ribbons to hide, but
couldn't get away. We think it's some kind of snailfish, but haven't
gotten a positive ID yet.
We got several pictures, so hopefully that will help. After about half an
hour, I motioned that
I was cold. I had never fully warmed up from the previous dive at Point
Lobos, so it wasn't
much of a surprise. We turned around and started back, when we came upon
a huge sheep
crab just sort of wandering along. We studied him for a couple of
minutes, then started
moving again when we spotted a little bland-colored fish, shaped kind of
like an eel. We
had seen dozens of black-eyed gobies this trip and at first thought he was
another one, but
his shape was wrong and so were his fins. We stopped to look at him, and
he glanced from
one to another of us several times, then did something incredible. He
stood on his tail and
started wiggling, and he actually dug himself into the sandy bottom. He
stopped at about
halfway and looked at us some more, then wiggled further and sank in until
just his head
was showing. He looked at us for a second, then wiggled again and he was
gone. He
completely buried himself in the sand, and after his head had disappeared,
he wiggled
some more and even the mound he had created leveled out so you couldn't
tell he had ever
been there. I had to know, so I tried to dig a little where he had sunk,
and he just wasn't
there. I figured he had to be called a Houdini Fish or something like
that, but we learned
later he's called a Catalina Conger. We gaped for a few seconds, then
moved on. Within
about 20 feet, we found another one and he did the same thing. It was
fascinating. We
reached the piling where we had descended, and ascended at the same point.
We took our
time going up, because there was plenty to see. Once on the surface, we
kept our masks
on, switched to our snorkels, and followed the sea wall toward the beach.
Strawberry Fields
Forever. Along the way we found several little crabs, other kinds of
anemones, and the
occasional opalescent nudibranch. They're a lot more colorful down there
than they are in
Puget Sound, by the way, I don't know why. We worked our way in along the
wall until we
got to standing depth, where we took off our fins and plodded back up to
the car. This was
a great end to our Monterey dive trip, and we were ready to go home and
rest a while.

One thing I forgot to mention in this report was the krill. A couple of
times on our dives we
swam through fairly big swarms of krill, I even got a decent picture of
one of them going by.
But this night, they were really attracted to our lights. As we got
closer and closer to the exit
point, they got thicker and thicker, until it reached a point where I knew
my might was only
about 10 inches off the bottom but I couldn't see the bottom because there
were so many of
them clustered around the light. That was ultimately why I called for us
to surface: between
the increasing particulate as we got closer to shore, and the impossibly
heavy krill swarms, I
was afraid of getting separated because we quite literally couldn't see
each other at times!
The krill flocking to the lights was cute at first, but by the end of the
dive it got downright
annoying.

[nwscubamom]

Fantastic reports, Dave.

You would have loved to have gone on a boat dive (Cypress Charters highly recommended and very REEF familiar and friendly) out to the spots that have the Stylaster hydrocorals!! Next time, plan that into your agenda and budget for sure...it's something you have to see!

And just for fun you might enjoy seeing my Monterey pics here so you can compare notes!

- Janna