Monterey Bay April 2021
Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:21 pm
Howdy
Scuba Jess and I just got back from a road trip to go dive with our Instagram buddies @dslaterphoto and @mansonfotos who live down in Monterey, CA! We had recently hosted them for some puget sound diving (showing them lump suckers, octos, wolfeels etc) and now we wanted to go visit their turf.
It was a great trip! It was our first time down there and I'm kicking myself for not going down there sooner. There's some GREAT cold water diving down there! Right up on par with some of the best best BC and WA diving.
It takes about 13 hours of driving to get down there. We drove it in two days each way with some stops along the way.
We did five dive sites over 4 days of diving:
+ The Breakwater (2x)
+ Perkin's Park tide pool (36.633469, -121.939192)
+ Monastery Beach
+ The Wharf
+ Point Lobos (4x)
Viz was highly variable, from 2'-50'!
Our guides were excellent, not only giving us great site briefings but also diving with us and pointing out all the good places to eat tacos and burritos!
The breakwater is an amazing dive. It reminds me a lot of Ogden Point Breakwater in Victoria in scale and structure. Dozens and dozens of sea lions make their home on this breakwater. Unfortunately, viz was very poor during this visit. Beautiful kelp, fish eating anemones, sea lions, lightbulb tunicates, hopkins rose nudibranchs and colorful bat stars steal the show here. Mola Molas and Sea nettles can also be occasionally seen at this location but we did not see them.
The tide pool is a great place to dive when conditions are rough elsewhere. Vizibility was fantastic! Beautiful algaes, bat stars and a few fish lined the pool. The entry is very rocky and can be a difficult scramble.
Monastery Beach is a famous Monterey Bay dive which has an entry known to be extremely difficult and unforgiving. Nicholas Ta (who really wants to meet JanK) led that dive and gave us a great briefing. Kelp and an open ocean feel rule the scene here. We met several friendly locals at this site and Nicholas took us all to a killer Chinese food place to eat outside afterward. So fun!
The wharf is another dive in town that can be dove when conditions are bad elsewhere. Unfortunately viz was about 2' with tons of mysids swimming about when we went. I was floored by the carpets of surf anemones and strawbery anemones at this site. Fringheads (kind of like mosshead warbonnets), ochre stars, opulescent nudis and other nudibranchs were also at these scene. David told us of a recent dive there were he had fantastic viz and thick sea nettles. Sounds so cool, I'd love to go back and see that!
Point Lobos was the star dive site of the trip. This is a nature preserve park that you have to pay a small fee to get into. They require reservations and only accept a limited number of divers a day which is nice. This dive site is a diver's playground... easy shallow diving, exquisite topography, beautiful kelp and many sightings of sea otters and seals from the shore. I even saw a seal and its baby pup underwater!
I almost had no photos from this trip... on the very first dive (at the breakwater) somehow my strobe cable got disconnected from the housing during the dive. Oof! Instant corrosion and dead strobes. Luckily the Backscatter Underwater Photo and Video store was a short walk from the dive site! @mansonfotos gave them a call to get us an appointment and to put in a good word for us. They came thru and were able to wipe out the corrosion from my connector in the housing (they recommended and used an alcohol cleaner) and loaned me a replacement cable for the rest of the trip. Talk about a life saver! Backscatter rocks! Really nice store and staff.
We got our fills at Bamboo Reef Dive Center. Really great shop, and we planted a NWDC sticker there!
Here were some of my snaps:
Try diving there sometime if you haven't!
Scuba Jess and I just got back from a road trip to go dive with our Instagram buddies @dslaterphoto and @mansonfotos who live down in Monterey, CA! We had recently hosted them for some puget sound diving (showing them lump suckers, octos, wolfeels etc) and now we wanted to go visit their turf.
It was a great trip! It was our first time down there and I'm kicking myself for not going down there sooner. There's some GREAT cold water diving down there! Right up on par with some of the best best BC and WA diving.
It takes about 13 hours of driving to get down there. We drove it in two days each way with some stops along the way.
We did five dive sites over 4 days of diving:
+ The Breakwater (2x)
+ Perkin's Park tide pool (36.633469, -121.939192)
+ Monastery Beach
+ The Wharf
+ Point Lobos (4x)
Viz was highly variable, from 2'-50'!
Our guides were excellent, not only giving us great site briefings but also diving with us and pointing out all the good places to eat tacos and burritos!
The breakwater is an amazing dive. It reminds me a lot of Ogden Point Breakwater in Victoria in scale and structure. Dozens and dozens of sea lions make their home on this breakwater. Unfortunately, viz was very poor during this visit. Beautiful kelp, fish eating anemones, sea lions, lightbulb tunicates, hopkins rose nudibranchs and colorful bat stars steal the show here. Mola Molas and Sea nettles can also be occasionally seen at this location but we did not see them.
The tide pool is a great place to dive when conditions are rough elsewhere. Vizibility was fantastic! Beautiful algaes, bat stars and a few fish lined the pool. The entry is very rocky and can be a difficult scramble.
Monastery Beach is a famous Monterey Bay dive which has an entry known to be extremely difficult and unforgiving. Nicholas Ta (who really wants to meet JanK) led that dive and gave us a great briefing. Kelp and an open ocean feel rule the scene here. We met several friendly locals at this site and Nicholas took us all to a killer Chinese food place to eat outside afterward. So fun!
The wharf is another dive in town that can be dove when conditions are bad elsewhere. Unfortunately viz was about 2' with tons of mysids swimming about when we went. I was floored by the carpets of surf anemones and strawbery anemones at this site. Fringheads (kind of like mosshead warbonnets), ochre stars, opulescent nudis and other nudibranchs were also at these scene. David told us of a recent dive there were he had fantastic viz and thick sea nettles. Sounds so cool, I'd love to go back and see that!
Point Lobos was the star dive site of the trip. This is a nature preserve park that you have to pay a small fee to get into. They require reservations and only accept a limited number of divers a day which is nice. This dive site is a diver's playground... easy shallow diving, exquisite topography, beautiful kelp and many sightings of sea otters and seals from the shore. I even saw a seal and its baby pup underwater!
I almost had no photos from this trip... on the very first dive (at the breakwater) somehow my strobe cable got disconnected from the housing during the dive. Oof! Instant corrosion and dead strobes. Luckily the Backscatter Underwater Photo and Video store was a short walk from the dive site! @mansonfotos gave them a call to get us an appointment and to put in a good word for us. They came thru and were able to wipe out the corrosion from my connector in the housing (they recommended and used an alcohol cleaner) and loaned me a replacement cable for the rest of the trip. Talk about a life saver! Backscatter rocks! Really nice store and staff.
We got our fills at Bamboo Reef Dive Center. Really great shop, and we planted a NWDC sticker there!
Here were some of my snaps:
- Viz was terrible at the breakwater -- Close focus wide angle saved the day in this snap
- Amazing marine life density at the breakwater. I love those strawberry anemones, mussels, barnacles, and coralline algae!
- Vermillion Rockfish at Point Lobos
- Fish eating anemones at Point Lobos. Some rocks had nearly a dozen small red fish eaters!
- Selfie!
- Fish eating anemone and kelp at Point Lobos
- I love kelp in the sunshine
- Beautiful schools of rockfish. Rockfish schools are so darn hard to photograph! (for me anyways, any tips appreciated)
Try diving there sometime if you haven't!
🏖
!
