Monterey & Environs January 20-23 2008
Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 9:23 pm
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.
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.