Monterey conditions. (let's keep it going )

[sea_otter]

Everyone gets lost at Lobos. Just not everyone admits to it. ;-)

My mom and I were there yesterday for two dives. The first one was around the end of Middle Reef, where we encountered beautiful vis in the neighborhood of 35-40 ft. Really calm, clear, and lots of nudibranchs. We were a bit disappointed by the lack of fish, though. Apparently they were all hanging out on the west side of the cove. Saw one big cabezon, a few canary rockfish, a few blues, but no bigger schools.

Second dive was to Coal Chute Cavern. I didn't know exactly where the cavern was - apparently it's just inside Coal Chute Cove on the south side. We managed to find it! Beautiful swim over middle reef, tons of fish, tons of life, and just a little surge. Not a dive you can do every day, but on a weekend like this, it is well worth doing! Though navigation worked pretty well on the way out (even not knowing exactly where I was going), I did end up aiming a bit south on the return, but we had plenty of gas to drop back down and swim to the boat ramp.

Dive 1: Max depth 64 ft, temperature 50F. Dive time 52 min.
Dive 2: Max depth 38 ft, temperature 53F. Dive time 77 min.
Temperature on land in the 90s... but an improvement over 110+ in San Jose!

 

[metalheadluigi]

2 dives at S. Monastery on Saturday morning.
Temp: 55F @ surface, 50F at depth
Depth/time:
Dive 1 - 52ft, 45 min
1:15 Surface Interval
Dive 2 - 47 ft, 40 min
Visibility was poor in shallow water (~10ft) but opened up to ~30 ft in deeper water.

Nice and easy entries/exits due to small <1ft waves. Absolutely beautiful with wildlife out in full force. Spotted plenty of rockfish, a few lingcod, a Sculpin, a spiny crab of some sort. Dive 1 highlight was definitely a harbor seal that came out of nowhere to eat something wedged in a crevice that one of my buddy's lights was illuminating. The same seal circled us for the next 5 minutes switching between following our lights through the reef rocks and scoping us out from about 10 ft away.

The shallows were a little surgey but easily avoidable.

Had to do a bit of a kelp crawl for dive 1, but adjusted our navigation on dive 2 to make sure our ascent was just outside of the kelp beds. Overall this was a phenomenal day to dive Monastery! Saw and heard from plenty of other divers equally excited about the vis/conditions.

 

[elgoog]

2 dives at Pt Lobos yesterday off the Escapade for a Reef Check survey - one at Weston (which is in the no-diving zone so this was super exciting for me) and then at Middle Reef. It was really surgy at both sites with visibility in the 20-30ft range and the water was a lot warmer than I've seen in the past few months, 57F at depth. Lots of fish around and a couple of survey teams reported fairly large sunflower stars at Weston which is very encouraging. There was also a lot of whale and dolphin activity on the surface pretty much all day as well.
-> 69ft, 40min at Weston, 34ft, 60min at Middle Reef

 

[mobeeno]

Got to North Monastery this Sunday morning about 11:00 am. Took a look at the conditions and it looked a bit rough. My understanding was that it was supposed to be NW 3' swell with about 8 seconds interval. Divers were reporting 40'vis or more the day before. Waited about half an hour and the sea got a lot calmer. Easy entry and exit, Vis was at least 40', nice and blue. Did not do a second dive because it did not look as calm in the later part of the day.

 

[JRCrab]

I finally got to return to North Monastery on Saturday. Had an awesome time with great viz (40 feet?) and what seemed like pretty warm water (something like 56deg at 60fsw, 53deg minimum at 115fsw) with very little swell, no surge.

First dive we swam out to the wash rock and dropped to ~60 feet. Contoured along the sand/rock interface until the great void came into view and decided to drop down further. I had forgotten to adjust my maximum depth setting on my computer so it started yelling at me when I got below 100ft. That was annoying, but I only had 6 min of no deco remaining anyway, so decided to turn the dive at that point and head back. Saw many of the usual critters with a few decent size lings. A cormorant came down to say hello around 70 or 80 fsw. We that that was pretty deep for that guy. Dolphins were near shore most of the morning, but we never saw them under the water. A couple said they heard clicking.

Second dive we dropped earlier into around 35fsw and did another out to the void and back swimming through the kelp a little more and staying a little higher.

Sunday I made the next step towards kayak diving and did some freediving/snorkeling around Stillwater cove. In the cove viz was terrible but I wanted to test the anchor and getting in/out with gear before getting too far from shore. With one success under our belt we paddled out and anchored off the west side of the islets. Visibility was really good. Probably 20 feet at shallow depths. The anchor setup is working great and I think I can declare the kayak officially ready for freediving. I'm going to add a couple tethers to make securing gear from the water easier and I think it'll be ready for scuba...So who wants to do some kayak accessed scuba soon!?

 

[JRCrab]

 

[chris_the_brit]

Had a great day in Monterey on Saturday:

Aquarium reef and MacAbee pinnacle on the Beachhopper in the morning. Sea was fairly calm, 53-54F at the bottom, 58 nearer the surface (warm!). Vis was at least 25 feet once you got below about 15fsw.
Saw huge, huge schools of sardines/anchovies, especially at MacAbee. It was amazing to just swim slowly into them and watch them move around you. Tons of sea nettles at MacAbee, some of them very large, and the sardines would make big clear spaces around them too.

In the afternoon I went out to the metridiums at Del Monte beach. Vis was lower, mostly 10 feet or less until I got to the metridiums where it opened up to 20-25 feet. Again, huge schools of baitfish, with cormorants plunging into them and sea lions and seals swimming through them. Swimming out along the pipe was like swimming through a tunnel made of sardines. It was a lovely sunny day but felt like twilight underneath them all.

I've never seen such enormous schools of fish before. Mind-blowing.

 

[Alex Y]

Dove Point Lobos yesterday, Friday 9/29. Surface water was dead calm pretty much all day. Dove the sand channel the first dive since this was my first time at Point Lobos, was diving at about 40ft for 45 minutes, viz was somewhere around 25ft or so. Dove the beginning of Middle Reef around 40ft for another 45 minutes the second dive, viz opened up out there to around 30ft. Last dive i got carried away and swam out to the end of Middle Reef and ended up catching myself down at about 67ft for 20 minutes, viz was awesome out there. Easily 30-45ft of viz. Water temps at 40ft were around 56 degrees. When i got down to 67 feet it was around 52 degrees.

It will be very hard to ever get back to The Breakwater after the Point Lobos experience.

 

[flyingDiver75]

Breakwater Cove on Sunday 10/1
15 - 25' on the jetty wall. Spotted 3 different nudibranch species, crabs, shrimp, and one largish ling cod. Lots of starfish eating sea nettles on the bottom.

5'-10' on the pipe heading out to the metridium fields but opened up to 15-25' past the pipe. Regular suspects as far as sea life.

 

[3D diver]

Snuck in a dive this morning at Point Lobos Middle Reef before the surf started to build.

Bottom time: 40 minutes
Max Depth: 56 feet
Visibility: 15 to 20 feet
Water Temperature: 52.9F to 55.8F logged by my computer, though the graphic shows as low as 51F. (?!?!)
Surface conditions: sunny & breezy. Water was glassy flat when we arrived, but the seas were building when we surfaced. Tide was about 1/3 up the ramp...maybe a bit more. Kelp has thinned out a bit, with several easy to find paths to the outer dive sites. Lots of pelicans flying around at first & a couple perched near the ramp.

We surface kicked over the sand channel to about even with the south side of Coal Chute cove and dropped near the "other" hole in the (Middle Reef) wall. We shot video clips of each other through the hole, then continued along the west side of Middle Reef. There were several big schools of Senoritas & a nice school of Tubesnout toward the end of the dive. The vis was about 10 feet on the surface but opened up to 15 to 20 feet along the reef. There weren't a lot of fish, but we shot video of the ones we found. At one point my buddy pointed out a nice school of Blue Rock fish well above us and I ascended 24 feet, without upsetting my computer, to try to get a shot. We turned around late (at 56 feet depth) and, due to some crack mis-navigation on my part, ended up surfacing well out in the Hole-in-the-Wall neighborhood. The seas had come up and the surface was choppy 'til we worked our way further back into Whaler's. The return surface swim and exit up the ramp were un-eventful.