South Monestary, and The Land of the Sealions

We celebrated Mark's birthday weekend with a couple of nice dives.

The first dive was at South Monestary. Monestary is famous for its wicked entries and exits, but yesterday, it was as mild as can be, with little ankle biter waves, and with the ocean a deep California blue.

The first thing we see is a dead adult sea otter in the kelp. It was scary and sad to see the specimen -- almost 4 feet long, doubled over in half, with a blond head. In the news today, there was mention of a rash of sea otter deaths, possibly from red tide(?). We took our time meandering on the edge of the kelp forest without ever getting deeper than 40 feet, unlike North Monestary that plunges into the Monterey Submarine Canyon. The life and topography here was almost on par with Point Lobos (Monestary does reside side by side with the State Park). The area was replete with featherduster worms, and psychelic sponges. So plentiful were the sponges that the decorator crabs, that usually cover their carapaces with vegetable growth, were covered with ugly bulbous white sponges. Mark saw a cotton candy pink sponge that looked like it was a modern Henry Moore sculpture. Water was warm, at least 56 degrees, which probably explains why we finished our longest dive in Monterey yet: 1h10 minutes. Viz was 25-30 feet with abundant krill in the shallows.

The second dive was at Breakwater. Breakwater is well known for being a beginner site where all the scuba classes are conducted. The reason why we did our dive at Breakwater was because I needed to get tank fills. We do it very often, however, I still think Breakwater is a world class site. We decided to try swimming to the end of the wharf where a colony of sea lions are known to reign supreme.

Descending was an unusual experience. I think there must have been red tide in the waters. The first 20 feet of descent was like descending through reddish orange tea water. The visibility was 2 -3 feet, with Mark and me barely able to discern each others lights. Swimming towards the wall, the rock jetty burst upon us before we knew it. Below 20 feet, the viz opened up to 20 feet. But it was very gloomy and dark. Mark and I had to illuminate our way with our primary lights. But boy, were we ever rewarded. The fish were out in force, and could scarcely move out of our way. I think that the fish thought it was night. As we neared the end of the wharf, sea lions kept buzzing us and running way. Finally, as I held onto Mark's arm in fear, we reached the land of the sea lions. 4 large juveniles, one almost Mark's length, swam around us in circles. We surfaced, not due to lack of air, but because Mark kept bumping his head against the rocks (the viz was very, very bad as we neared the beach). Our surface swim back was treated to 100 brown pelicans flying overhead.

Upon exiting the water, we ran into some old friends who were showing their parents around. They had just visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium to check out the baby Great white shark newly installed at the Outer Bay exhibit.