The Second Sister

Rob, Ted and I dove Point Lobos on Saturday. We've been meaning to get out to the Three Sisters again for a while, so we headed out there. We swam out with Suzanne and Ian, and descended in about 50 feet not far from Hole in the Wall. From the surface, we could see the sand. So we knew people weren't lying about how great the viz has been lately. My light crapped out immediately at the beginning of the dive. It worked on the surface, and by the time that we had descended and sorted things out, I noticed it was dead. So I had to use on of my backups, it was sad. Everyone else's light was bigger than mine :P Anibal and Jonathan were doing a deco dive out to the Sisters too, and they gave us some navigation advice before heading out there. We basically swam out to the end of the Hole in the Wall reef, and then headed NW, passing several of the parallel ledges (including the Lone Metridium, who was very much closed for business... he was looking like a sad little stump). We ended up running right into the second sister (I've only been to the first one before, but Rob has been to all three, and Suzanne and Ian confirmed this was the second one). Suzanne and Ian were a lot faster than the three of us, because by the time we got there, they were already heading back. I like having Ted around to help keep the pace... Rob is a speed demon, but with both Ted and I swimming slowly, we kept him in line.

Anyhoo, on the way out there, we were swimming in mid-water (around 70 feet), and there were tons of juvenile blue rockfish out in mid-water with us. Rob noticed a jellyfish in the water, and then we realized the same type of jellyfish was all over the place. I think it was Solmissu sp. Pretty neat. Then I noticed some other kind of jellyfish, which we only saw one of. It had a yellow center, so it may have been a small egg yolk jelly, but I'm really not sure. Unfortunately we don't have the jellyfish identification book, so I will have to look the next time I'm at Any Water :) We finally hit the second sister (all that swimming towards nothing was quite a leap of faith). By that far out, the horizontal viz was at least 50 feet (and vertical was probably even better). But oh man was it cold... my computer said 46 degrees for basically the whole dive. The second sister was nice, it had a nice carpet of strawberry anemones, a bunch of elephant ear sponges (more than the first sister), and a lot of small purple hydrocoral. On the way back in, we spent some time around the ledges parallel to Hole in the Wall. We also swam through a little section of dark kelp forest. The kelp is really coming in! I was unbelievably cold on the swim in. I was actually thinking at one point... why in the heck would anyone dive in water this cold!?! I can't imagine living somewhere where the water is always in the mid-40s, seems a lot colder than 50 :) I was trying to decide when I could reasonably insist on surfacing, since I didn't want too long of a surface swim. Then around 20 feet, Rob or Ted signalled us to ascend. I told Ted (who was running "deco") afterwards that the 10 foot stop was the coldest 3 minutes of my life :) When we got back to the ramp, I was having trouble getting my fins off because both my hands and feet were so cold, it was hard to move them. 89 feet, 83 minutes, 46 degrees (brrr!)

We were all too cold for a second dive. So instead, we headed over to Otter Bay and all got new hoods (Ted lost his at Lobos a week or so ago, Rob and I have been living with sub-par hoods all along), and played with the kitties. I found a stock size to fit me, but since Rob and Ted have irregular sized heads, they both have to wait a week for Cricket to make theirs.

Pictures from the dive are here!