Guest Dive Report: Lobos, the leisurely way

I left Allison behind today and joined Don and Elissa on their Lobos Reservation. Jonathan was around and had a reservation also, so the four of us teamed up. We got a late start (which was fine by me since I was still sleeping off the brutal 3:45am wakeup yesterday) and met at the park around 11:00.

I had promised Don and Elissa no "death swims", but somehow the plan came to be to do 3 sisters anyway. I had been waffling about whether to bring the camera or not, and was still waffling about it up until we were about to get in the water. I really wanted to be shooting macro today, but I was too lazy (tired) last night to switch the lenses/ports/arms over. I think I was inspired by the number and variety of slugs that we found yesterday.

We swam out along the sand channel and dropped in about 45'. We passed a couple dead or dying moon-jellies along the way. I wonder if this is a sign of the end of the jellies' run for the year. I played with one of the jelly carcasses briefly; it had a surprising amount of rigidity. Anyway, we dropped and started heading over toward hole-in-the-wall and lone-metridium. We made decent time out there, and moved on to follow the reef structure further NW. We left the reef structure and headed out to sister #3. By this point, the visibility had cleared up to a decent 40' or so, but green.

We spent a little bit of time out at the sisters, but then headed back to the reef structure along cannery pt. and slowly worked our way back in. Along the way, (of course since I had been too lazy to change over to macro) I saw tons of Dialula sandiegensis and Peltodoris nobilis, a Phidiana hiltoni, and 2 Limacia cockerelli. Oh well. We took our time making our way back to hole-in-the-wall and then hopped over to middle reef. As we were crossing the sand channel, I noticed that there was a current of sorts moving pretty well out of the cove. All of the kelp was bent over and I was having to adjust my angle of attack in order to fight against it. Not sure where all the water was coming from (extreme tides maybe?), but Whaler's cove isn't *that* big, is it? Hrm.

We worked our way back along middle reef and I showed Jonathan, Don and Elissa the pet wolf eel den. This is the second time I've been there of late where the only eel present was the large grey one. I hope the red one hasn't left us just yet :(

From there we headed back to the ramp stopping briefly to marvel at a massive lingcod.

102 minutes, 92ft, 49deg.

Dive 2 at Hula Hut, for a change of pace from RG Burger.