Video: 10/24/09 Escapade Dives

[Gombessa]

I've pretty much never been on Monterey boats until recently, and it's nice to finally see the sites I've been reading about all this time. We were joined today by AWL of Team Kitty fame.

With predictions calling for 6-8ft swells and 30 knot winds, I made sure I was heavily dram'd the night before. When we got to the dock, things looked fairly calm. Still, we had some 5-6ft rolling waves out in the bay, and we parked at Aumentos for dive 1. I'm not sure what I think about this site. It's nice and all, but it was a mola slaughterhouse. I mentioned last week that I've never seen a mola while diving, but this isn't really what I was hoping for. Pretty depressing, and amazing at the same time.

Our surface interval was pretty long since the Escapade went OOA (out of anchor) and had to deploy the backup. Dive 2 was at Shale Island. Seems to me a better name would be Shale Pancake. We took the better part of an hour circumnavigating the "island," ending near the huge navy anchor. The viz was quite a bit more variable here, but the shale beds really reward slow, close-up viewing so it's actually a good low-viz site (not to mention that navigation is easy since you end up at your starting location simply by following the contour of the shale).

[youtubehq]WVUGZyXaV1M[/youtubehq]

Or: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVUGZyXaV1M
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[Ben_ca]

Nice video... I really enjoy your video reports... It's like I was there. Oh and the nice rocking on the boat

Too bad you didn't see the school of Mola's last week seeing them in their dying throes is truly sad.

 

[rdjiv]

+1

Love watching your videos! Am watching the whole lot now on youtube!

 

[kathydee]

Great video - looks like a fun time!

Saw a few more tortured Mola Molas at BW today.

Yes it is very sad.

 

[blewgrass]

could it be determined if the molas suffered boat injuries or predator attacks? About half of the ocean sunfish I see up here by boat in Bodega are damaged or injured. Perhaps it is the slow speed in which they swim and their habit of hanging near the surface.

Great video.

 

[masterof0]

Great video Kenn. Makes me that much more excited about getting back out to CA and get back in the water...

 

[Gombessa]

Thanks all, it was a really fun day to shoot, especially since both sites were brand new to me.

Blewgrass, as to the molas, the sea lions were implicated beyond a reasonable doubt: right next to the third mola at 1:46, you'll notice that one of the sea lions dropped its wallet, with ID, on the ground. We flagged down a passing squid car and gave the evidence to the state grouper.

When your brain recovers from the above, actually from the boat we could see the sea lions jumping out of the water with molas in their mouths - they'd toss them into the air like frisbees and dive back down to bring them back to the surface again. A huge flock of seagulls would congregate in the area trying to peck off little bits of the molas as they got tossed. I've heard conflicting stories about whether the sea lions are just playing, or whether they're saving the molas as a snack for later.

 

[astrofunk]

could it be determined if the molas suffered boat injuries or predator attacks? About half of the ocean sunfish I see up here by boat in Bodega are damaged or injured. Perhaps it is the slow speed in which they swim and their habit of hanging near the surface.

Predators, I think. During our surface interval, we watched sea lions tossing molas around like frisbees.

 

[astrofunk]

When your brain recovers from the above, actually from the boat we could see the sea lions jumping out of the water with molas in their mouths - they'd toss them into the air like frisbees and dive back down to bring them back to the surface again.

Ah Kenn, you beat me to the punch -- and with the same metaphor!

 

[Ben_ca]

Metaphors are team resources...