Friday I took off work to dive with Beta, Joakim, and Dionna off of the Escapade. Arrived in Monterey and loaded all the gear onto the boat. Since there were only 4 of us there was lots of room for our scooters and deco bottles. We were planning on diving Mt Chamberlain to a depth of 220′, perfect Tech 2 dive. Joakim had just completed his Tech 2 class so this was his first post class T2 dive. As we left the Bay we could see thousands of Jellyfish everywhere. The wake of the boat was chewing them up by the hundreds. I was glad not to be diving in there. Still, the Bay was very flat but once we rounded the corner the swells picked up a bit. As we continued on the swells did get a bit larger but nothing that would make us call the dive and pick another spot. We arrived at the dive spot about an hour after we left the dock. The water looked blue and clear but that can be deceiving. We geared up with our doubles and clipped on one deco bottle. Once in the water the crew handed us another bottle and our scooters. Beta and Joakim had jumped in first and were waiting at the bouy. We have drifted back a bit so needed to scooter a few minutes to get back to the down line. Pointing our scooter down we took off. The vis was a bit cloudy to start, the reef came into focus at about 150′ or so. Slowing down at 180′ I signaled the other divers as I had just spotted a Ratfish swimming close to us. We continued down to 220′ and the vis opened up to about 50′ which was great. There were thousands of small fish which flashed out of the way when you shone your light towards them. The reef was full of hard and soft coral, purples, reds, oranges, whites. A large school of Rockfish was hiding in a small inlet of the reef. Just about that time we scootered over the reef, turned the corner and were met with a strong current that the scooters had a hard time overcoming. We decided to turn slowly out of the current and back round the corner. Beta led us along a straight canyon turned left and under an arch… fantastic. After about 30 minutes of depth we came up a bit and wandered around some checking out the tops of the reef. At the predetermined time we ascended to 70′ and settled in for 50 minutes of deco. The Jellyfish were not too bad so there was no stings on the way up. Overall a great dive, a dive were you can say, “That’s what my Tech 2 class was for”.

I talked Harry Wong into letting me dive with him, Ian, and Chris at Lobos on Sunday. The plan was to go out to Twin Peaks, spend 15 mins out there poking around and enjoying the area then back in again. We were diving 21/35 and doing our deco on 50%. Harry was on a long body Gavin, Ian was diving a short body, and Chris and I were on X’s. Once we were out of the cove the vis opened up quite nicely and once past Beto’s reef we estimated it to be around 70-80′. Since there was no sun up it was a bit dim but you could still make out structures from quite a distance. The team stayed together very well and once we made it out to TP, Harry requested a few ‘fly bys’ for his video shots. Ian and I spotted a number of big Tritonia festiva nudis and the usual rockfish were in the neighborhood. We scootered around the end and headed back in towards the Sisters then over to Betos till we reached our deco depth. After deco we fought our way back through the kelp and back to the boat ramp. Our surface interval consisted of lunch, of course, and chatting to Chris about diving in the LA area. After lunch we decided to do our next dive out to Granite Point Wall. Chris was diving with his wife so it was just Ian, Harry, and me. After arriving at the wall Harry again wanted to some video so I aimed my scooter right at him through a nice rock crevice and attempted to go over the camera. One small problem, his light got in the way… clunk! “Ahead all stop captain”. No damage and a lot of laughing.. we continued on. After we left the wall and were over the sand patch Ian found what looked like a stingray, except it was rock hard. We guessed it was an old whale bone and after playing with that for a while we headed back around to Middle Reef and finished our deco then scootering back in on the surface. Great day of diving, no sun, but can’t have it all.

After a couple of years of seeing my fellow divers compete in the yearly NCUPS contest I decided this year was my turn. I paid my $75 entrance fee and met everyone at Aquarius dive shop for the sign up. Harry B. and Dionna H. were my buddies and spotters of all good things photogenic. First decision after getting my T-Shirt and instructions was where to dive first. There are strict rules against any type of boat diving or propulsion help, such as scooters. All the dives therefore, must be done via the beaches, and since Lobos is restricted by the reservation system, it is also off limits. We decided our first dive would be South Monastery. A first for me and I was not too impressed with the North side last time but since I was taking only macro shots and diving a single tank, it sounded ok. The waves were low with a bit of swell and the visibility was decent so we stayed for about 75mins and I took 208 shots. We then headed out to Coral Street, had a bit of lunch, then back in for our second dive. The kelp here was really nice with all the sun shining through and another 70 or so minutes and 130 shots at this location. We were out of the water at about 2:45 and I still had to get to backscatter to review all my shots and pick 3 for each category that I was going to enter. I arrived at the shop at 3pm, found a seat and started going through the images. An hour later I was pretty happy with my selections and submitted them for judging which would take place the next day. The evening was filled with a BBQ dinner and a presentation by Andy Sallmon. The next day was again filled with activities. From 9am - 11am, Mary Lynn Price presented “Through a Video Journalist’s Eyes”, and after a lunch break Ken Howard presented Effective Composition with a critique of photos that were submitted by any volunteers. Finally the judges presented the winners which included myself! Here is my second place winning photo:

The rest of the photos are here.

Where to go on Sunday? The vis in the Monterey Bay was rumored to be 10-20′ which is not really good enough to drive down to. None of us had Lobos reservations so Dionna suggested Monastery which I had never done after all the years of diving here. You can only really do Monastery when the swell and waves are very small as it is very dangerous otherwise. We set up our tables at the North end on the beach then humped our gear down and set it on the tables. We then geared up and swam out about 5 mins before dropping down. I could clearly see the bottom for most of the swim out but near the end I lost site which looked to be about 40′. As we dropped down Harry who was leading followed the wall on the right till we leveled off at 100′. The usual slugs and fish were waiting for us and after about 20 mins we turned the dive and followed the wall back in. Again, lots of the usual varieties of rockfish, nudibranches, kelp, and a few nice Greenlings but nothing out of the ordinary. As we got closer in we ventured into the shallows and poked in all the holes we could find trying to see if anything was home. Lots of krill about and large schools of longnose snoutfish. As we reached 10′ Harry called it and then the fun began. Getting my fins off I attempted to scramble up the sand but the sand acted like a treadmill and it took 3 or 4 attempts before I made it out of the water. I was glad the table was there because I was pooped at the effort. After a short rest we all trekked our gear back to the cars and Dionna and I stopped at Sea Harvest in the mall to have lunch. Nice dive site but I’m not sure the effort is worth it.

Harry B and I wanted to get an early start at the Breakwater so decided to meet at 8am in the lower parking lot. I arrived about 5 mins after to a pretty full lot. No single spots left but a few doubles were still available. No sign of Harry after another 5 mins so I gave him a call and he said he had to go back for his GPS and would be pulling in shortly. I went to get a parking ticket, waiting a few mins then saw Harry pulling in. I followed him back to the lower lot then loaded my gear into the boat. We launched with overcast weather and very calm conditions. As we were going out we past Chuck T and he signaled us over, he looked pretty excited and said he could see the bottom and the metridians. After hearing that we were pretty stoked as we had brought our scooters and were expecting some great conditions for scootering. We dropped our anchor close to the Beach Hopper just at the point before you turn and leave the bay. Harry said he could see the anchor at the bottom so conditions were still looking good. We both dropped in with our scooters and noticed a bit of a current on the surface. As we descended the visibility top to bottom was still good but horizontally was only 30-40′, I still will never understand why the vis changes like that. I was navigating and headed SW towards an area we had dove before. This dive I think is most interestin because of the topology. Huge towering walls, splits in the rocks, large boulders, and the like that make it pretty interesting. Fish life was not that great, I saw a couple of medium size lingcods, and a few rockfish but no schools. We did a lot of exploring and although I knew generally where the anchor was, the vis made it very difficult to find. We saw the divers from the Beach Hopper a number of times and near the end of the dive I found the Beach Hopper anchor which was directly south of us. I did a couple of loops around where I thought we should be then signaled to Harry to ascend. At about 30′ we floating right into our anchor line and surfaced directly at the boat.

After piling all the gear back in the boat, we headed in for lunch at the Deli, mmmmm…. BBQ pork ….

Since we got into the water so early we we back on the water again close to 12. This time we had decided to go to Hopkins Deep to see if the vis was better. Since someone else was a Hopkins Deep we dropped the anchor at Mola Mountain and again could see down about 60-70′. This time Harry and I brought all our bottles to do a few drills after we had completed our dive on the stage. I would say that this site was much more interesting for fish life. Small schools of rockfish, large patches of metridians covering the rocks, and many nudibranches. I saw a large Triopha catalinae on a seaweed leaf, 4 or 5 Cadlina luteomarginata on the rocks, a few Diaulula sandiegensis, and a medium sized lingcod hiding in a crevice which I initially thought was a wolf eel. Getting back to the anchor was easy as we had tied off to the line and Harry reeled us back in once we had reached the end of the line. At the line I ran the fake deco and had us switching to our 70′ bottle at 50′ as 60′ was a bit shallow. Up at 40 Harry juggled his bottles and at 30 I did the same. We also switched back to our back gas then ascended up to 20 and switched to our O2. Everything squared away we ascended to sunny skies and got out of our gear and back into the boat.

Overall nice diving, too bad the vis didn’t turn out to be what we thought it was but we were able to get two good dives in so we were not complaining. A few top side photos here.