Friday Night Dive

Since we won't be diving this weekend, we decided to go down to Monterey for a night dive on Friday. The plan was to get to Monterey around 6:30 and get in the water between 7 and 7:15. Unfortunately, it took us an extra half hour to get down there due to Friday evening traffic. So we didn't end up in the water until about 7:45.

We dove the Metridium field (our first night dive there). 85 minutes, 49 ft, 52 degrees F. We planned to hit the Metridium field and if time allowed, we'd circle around to the wall and head in there. On the way out, we ended up spending a bunch of time in the shallows to the west of the pipe, so we didn't make it over to the wall. Anyhoo, other than the daytime usual suspects, we saw a bunch of red octopus (2 decent-sized ones, many more small ones); three giant rainbow nudibranchs (two pink, one white), including one that we saw "pounce" on its prey (a tube anemone); a squid (my first ever squid); lots of little spotted cusk eels (as usual) but also two big ones; a rainbow surfperch (which I have never seen before, or at least never noticed before). A bait-ball of anchovies followed us around for much of the dive... guess they enjoyed our lights lighting up the food for them. We also saw a very mysterious, and pretty gross-looking, worm. It was in mid-water, dancing/undulating in a circular shape. We both thought it looked like a bloated piece of small intestine. Pretty ugly, but I'd love to know what it is. The squid was way cooler than I expected squid to be. I thought it would be white, have longish legs, and that's about it. Instead, it had a reddish pattern on it, short legs (relative to the body) and these little wing/fin things on its sides, near the base of the body. It was pretty. We also saw a giant shrimp (well, the biggest shrimp I've ever seen while diving) -- not sure what kind it was. And of course there were the metridium, which practically glowed at night. They were all open and they were swaying. Very nice.

Afterwards, we pretty much decided that the metridium side of the breakwater kicks the walls butt in terms of being a cool night dive. The pipe alone has tons of great night critters on it.