After toughing it out Saturday in the Red Tide at BW, my buddy Anne and I were delighted to head to Carmel Sunday on Monterey Express.
Our first stop was East Pinnacle (Escapade and another boat were already on the other two when we got there). No current, no wind, glassy water with about a 4' swell, and bright sunshine. Things were looking great.
We dropped onto the west side of the pinnacle. Vis was OK at about 25' (compared to Saturday), water temp was 54 degrees. We headed north up through a crevasse in the Pinnacle following the anchor line (checked out the anchor footing which looked like it was going nowhere) and headed down the east side to about 85'. As usual, the walls were covered with corynactus, orange sponges, Telia anemones, and an explosion of various life forms crowding each other for space. We swam over a small Ling cod sitting on a ledge, and cruised through kelp forests, big fissures and snooped beneath the overhangs as though it was a big amusement park attraction. Finally, we circled back around counter clockwise through another fissure to the west side and made our ascent along the wall.
After the short trip in to Stillwater Cove, Capt Tim announced that we had arrived at what he called "Caverns" and that there was an arch to swim through about 70 meters north of where we anchored, just between Pescadero point and Fire Rock at the mouth of the cove. There was a lot of kelp, both bull kelp and giant kelp, and we decided to just drop in a clear area and head north. Vis was about the same, maybe a little better, temp was 52 degrees. We found the bottom at 50' and worked our way up through a series of rock canyons and notches all covered with corynactus and sponges, with some hydro coral. I was really looking for Nudis but didn't see any. We navigated through a series of bright, then dark areas, corresponding with the variations in the kelp canopy, and dropped into a deeper, large round chamber-like depression in the bottom. It felt nice to have a space to explore when suddenly, out of the corner of my left eye, I saw a streak of grey. It was a large seal, about 5-6 feet end to end and big and fat. He circled around in front of me and stopped about two feet from my mask. We were hovering motionless like that for about 3 seconds, face to face, and then he sped off doing barrel rolls off to the south and out of view through a rocky notch. I looked around at Anne and her eyes were very large.
We hit our turn pressure without finding the swim-through but didn't feel cheated. We cruised back toward the boat, finally locating a wall that dropped off to the south into deeper water and decided to ascend into a clear area free of kelp. Another diver was already doing his safety stop in the water column as we came up. We hit the surface, saw that we were about 30 meters off the stern of the boat, dropped back under the kelp and came up at the swim step. Once on the boat we looked around and saw Cypress Sea about 300 yards to NE just putting divers in the water.
On the return leg, as soon as we were underway the fog came in and everything turned grey and cold. We felt super lucky to have hit such bright sunshine which had brought out the colors on the rock faces and shot sunbeams filtering down through the kelp. Near Pt Pinos we slowed to let a pod of dolphins pass and saw sea lions fighting for space on the corner bouy.
Our first stop was East Pinnacle (Escapade and another boat were already on the other two when we got there). No current, no wind, glassy water with about a 4' swell, and bright sunshine. Things were looking great.
We dropped onto the west side of the pinnacle. Vis was OK at about 25' (compared to Saturday), water temp was 54 degrees. We headed north up through a crevasse in the Pinnacle following the anchor line (checked out the anchor footing which looked like it was going nowhere) and headed down the east side to about 85'. As usual, the walls were covered with corynactus, orange sponges, Telia anemones, and an explosion of various life forms crowding each other for space. We swam over a small Ling cod sitting on a ledge, and cruised through kelp forests, big fissures and snooped beneath the overhangs as though it was a big amusement park attraction. Finally, we circled back around counter clockwise through another fissure to the west side and made our ascent along the wall.
After the short trip in to Stillwater Cove, Capt Tim announced that we had arrived at what he called "Caverns" and that there was an arch to swim through about 70 meters north of where we anchored, just between Pescadero point and Fire Rock at the mouth of the cove. There was a lot of kelp, both bull kelp and giant kelp, and we decided to just drop in a clear area and head north. Vis was about the same, maybe a little better, temp was 52 degrees. We found the bottom at 50' and worked our way up through a series of rock canyons and notches all covered with corynactus and sponges, with some hydro coral. I was really looking for Nudis but didn't see any. We navigated through a series of bright, then dark areas, corresponding with the variations in the kelp canopy, and dropped into a deeper, large round chamber-like depression in the bottom. It felt nice to have a space to explore when suddenly, out of the corner of my left eye, I saw a streak of grey. It was a large seal, about 5-6 feet end to end and big and fat. He circled around in front of me and stopped about two feet from my mask. We were hovering motionless like that for about 3 seconds, face to face, and then he sped off doing barrel rolls off to the south and out of view through a rocky notch. I looked around at Anne and her eyes were very large.
We hit our turn pressure without finding the swim-through but didn't feel cheated. We cruised back toward the boat, finally locating a wall that dropped off to the south into deeper water and decided to ascend into a clear area free of kelp. Another diver was already doing his safety stop in the water column as we came up. We hit the surface, saw that we were about 30 meters off the stern of the boat, dropped back under the kelp and came up at the swim step. Once on the boat we looked around and saw Cypress Sea about 300 yards to NE just putting divers in the water.
On the return leg, as soon as we were underway the fog came in and everything turned grey and cold. We felt super lucky to have hit such bright sunshine which had brought out the colors on the rock faces and shot sunbeams filtering down through the kelp. Near Pt Pinos we slowed to let a pod of dolphins pass and saw sea lions fighting for space on the corner bouy.
The red tide was really bad on the 6th off the coast of Moss Beach. Makes for pretty unappealling water.
