Diving Sans Bob

Today, I went on my first ever dive without Rob. It was very exciting to be unencumbered by the ball and chain :) We met up with John at South Monastery and decided it was way too nasty, then headed to Lobos to see if we could get in. There was an available reservation, but we were supposed to meet up with Ted too, and we could only get 3 people in, so we passed. We headed up to Monterey and checked out several sites on the way (Carmel River Beach, Butterfly House, Lover's Point) and none looked good (Carmel was rough, Lover's we got a report of 3 foot vis). So we ended up at the Breakwater, where we met up with Ted. Both upper lots were full! We had to park on the street above the upper lot, and schlep down to the beach, where we setup our tables.

We decided to dive the Metridium field in two teams, Rob and John, and me and Ted. I was leading my team. We decided if the teams were separated, that's fine just do the dive with your buddy. So, we descend into some serious muck. There was so much junk in the water. By the time we got to the bottom (in 35', that was a long swim out thanks to John and Rob who were ahead of us on the way into the water), we had completely lost John and Rob. Oh well. We headed for the pipe, and like 30 feet later, there it was. Not bad. We got to the Metridium field very quickly (thanks to the long swim out). Usually I head west-ish once we hit the first metridium, but I've been wondering how far east it extends, so I decided to find out. So we hopped from rock to rock in the northeast direction. It extends for a while in that direction. But the swim in was over a lot of sand, so I think on the east side, the metridium must not extend quite as far south. Anyhoo, I saw a small white rainbow nudibranch on a tube anemone. It was the smallest I've ever seen, maybe 2 inches long. I also saw a new (to me) nudibranch, which I suspect to be Armina californica, a couple nice-sized (one quite large) clown nudibranchs, a nice-sized octopus, and a big bunch of squid eggs. (Note that I didn't take any of these pictures, I just found all these lovely pictures on Clinton's site and thought it would be fun to provide links.) Diving without Rob was pretty fun, Ted didn't once try to take over leadership of the dive :)

The surf was at times pretty impressive for the Breakwater. On the way out, Ted kept yelling "wave". And then all of the waves stopped and I found myself standing in 1 foot of water with a fin still on. Not to worry, a minute later, a 3 foot wave came along and gave me deep enough water to get the fin off. 68 minutes, 57 ft, 50 degrees.