del monte beach report: Sat 9/8/12

[KRL1973]

strong winds and some kind of race blocking off the road along the monterey to Pacific grove coast forced me to change plans and dive del monte. Forgot the exact line-ups for the sailboat and missed it but had a decent dive anyway. Highlight was sighting of a small torpedo/electric ray swimming lazily about 4ft off the bottom at ~35fsw, took a nice long look at a respectful distance as this was my 1st ever sighting of one of these. Devoid of fish otherwise but some massive Venus Fly trap-like nudi's (sorry forgot the name but the gaping mouths could fit my gloved fist inside, WOW easily 4x bigger than those I have seen previously) and the occasional crab and rock covered with strawberry anemones kept it interesting.


Max depth= 49
Avg depth =38
Bottom time= 57 min
Vis= ranged from 10ft-20ft

ken loomis

 

[deadbilly]

Did the venus fly trap look like this:



Or like this:



If the first, it's a Melibe leonina
If the second, it's a predatory tunicate (don't remember the species off the top of my head), and I'm very jealous that you saw one. To my knowledge, those don't typically occur in diveable depths.

 

[KRL1973]

was Melibe leonina definately. There were many of them on most every patch of kelp I encountered beyond 40fsw if anyone wants to go out to see them. Saw1 free swimming as well, which was interesting.

Thanks for Id'ing it

 

[uspap]

Dove Del Monte Pier on 09/17/2012. Tons of Sea Nettles. A truely awesome dive. Heres a link if it works.
Del Monte Pier 254-255 090 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!