The Right Side of Lobos

Photo by Ben Villao

On Sunday, we did a scooter dive with David and Kevin. We decided to go to the "right side" instead of the left, like we usually do. So we planned to go over to the the Granite Point Pinnacles area, towards Thumbs Up. I was not entirely convinced that we would make it to Thumbs Up in the 20 minutes of trigger time that we allowed, but figured it would be cool to check out the area out in that direction in any case. Kevin and I were team 1, and Rob and David were team 2. Kevin was leading. Both Rob and David left their cameras behind. It was kind of strange to be on a dive where no one was shooting at all.

Photo by Ben Villao

We staged our copious quantities of gear on our float, which we quickly realized could not support the weight of 4 people's bottles and scooters (well, 3 people's scooters -- Kevin is vehemently opposed to staging his scooter, and he gets very touchy about it if you try to :P). Clinton and Mike had put out a float (for their cameras I guess), and since they and Melissa had already headed out, we decided to borrow a little float real estate from them (shhh don't tell). Then we schlepped ourselves in through the low tide and headed out. The visibility definitely was not what it was on Saturday :( On the other hand, the surface was much less choppy than it had been on Saturday afternoon, so that was good. We scootered out on the surface to just past the worm patch, and dropped there. We headed out along the sand channel, and then over to Granite Point Wall. From there, we followed the reef for a while, and then skittered from reef to reef in a north-northeast direction. We passed some familiar landmarks on the way out, including one pinnacle that David, Rob and I had spent an entire dive on before, which had a memorable big elephant ear on one side, and a small rock with a Metridium family about 20 feet away. Not far from there, I scootered right up to a small jellyfish that was cup-shaped with 4 reddish tentacles going straight down. I stopped to look at it, and Rob and David (who were behind me) looped back to look at it. Unfortunately, Kevin did not get the memo, so I had to leave it behind. I need to figure out what it is. David says we saw something like that the last time we were out there, which seems vaguely familiar.

Photo by Mike Jimenez

After crossing some more sand and reefs, we eventually came to a big impressive wall and decided to clip off there and swim around. By this point, I was already really cold, so it was good to get off the trigger and swim around. I didn't really know if this was Thumbs Up or not, but whatever. When we first got there, the bottom was probably in about 120 feet, and it must have risen at least 40 feet above us. On a better visibility day, looking up the face of the wall would be a spectacular view. The wall was not nearly as covered in life as other sites, which is sort of surprising since other areas on the Granite Point side are incredibly colorful. But there were cool critters to be found. Kevin pointed out a Cadlina flavomaculata, and then I showed him a teeny tiny Festive Triton nearby. I also found a few small Spanish shawls. We eventually meandered over to some boulders on the sand a little bit off the wall. Kevin signaled me and pointed out a nudibranch. As I was swimming over, I saw some sort of yellow dorid and was thinking he was pointing out something really boring. Then I realized it was not boring at all! It was a Doriopsilla spaldingi, which I have never seen before. I signaled Rob and told him to come over to look at something, and he signaled me to come to him to look at something, and I was like no, you come here, but he wouldn't budge. I figured my cool thing probably wasn't going anywhere, so I swam over and he pointed to a gorgonian. I swam up close and looked where he was pointing, and there was a simnia snail (another critter which I have never seen before!). Then I took him back over to the nudi and showed it to him.

Photo by Mike Jimenez

I was getting colder and colder, and kept jamming on my drysuit inflator to add more Argon. Then at some point I started to suspect nothing was going in... I wasn't sure though, since I was already pretty puffed up, so I thought maybe I just couldn't feel the addition of a small amount of gas. I reached back to my valve and turned it, and it felt a little loose, but not like empty tank loose, so that was inconclusive. By this point we were at the deepest point of the dive (130 to 140), though, so I figured it didn't really matter. Not long after that, we headed in. We passed Crossroads, which I guess is a waypoint on the trip to Montana (so David and Kevin recognized it), and eventually passed our elephant ear pinnacle again too. Somewhere between the two, Kevin circled a rock as we were coming up to it, and I saw a nice big Dirona albolineata. We all stopped to check it out. I've only seen one once before, and it was not as big as this one. It was flapping in the breeze. At some point on the way in, Kevin did a barrel roll, and I decided it would be a good spot for me to work on my scooter acrobatics... we were probably 15 or so feet off the sand, and there weren't any structures near enough for me to accidentally run into :) So I gave it a try and managed to successfully barrel roll. That was fun, so I did another one. Kevin saw them both, but apparently Rob was oblivious (I don't think he believed I actually managed to pull it off, with a bottle and everything). Soon enough, we were back at Granite Point Wall, and we switched to our deco bottles. There was a decent amount of surge out there as we did it. Then Rob took the lead, since he was running deco. We crossed the sand and hit Middle Reef right where we usually do. We followed the reef briefly, but then after some run-ins with kelp, we ended up back over the sand channel. Eventually we got to the worm patch just in time for our 20 foot stop. David and I each shot a bag, since we both wanted to practice that. I thought it would be completely impossible to do since I was so cold, but I had actually warmed up a bit -- I guess going from 130 feet to 20 feet, that 12 mm hood gets a lot warmer! We finished off our stops there, and when I got to the surface, I was delighted to see that my bag was fully inflated. Apparently David had a flaccid bag, but I didn't get to see it before he added air to it on the surface to deceive me :) We rolled those up and scooted back to the ramp. 137 feet (max), 84 minutes, 48 degrees

Photo by Ben Villao

The tide was even lower when we got there. We were about to start clipping stuff off on the floats when Ben appeared and told us to just hand stuff up to him. He took all of our gear piece by piece, and then helped us each out one at a time. Thanks a lot, Ben. I managed to avoid crawling out (on my bruised knees from Saturday) by finding a little nook to stand in while I took my fins off and then stepping up to the ramp. Unfortunately I bruised my foot by getting knocked around in the nook. Woe is me.

After we packed everything up, we went to RG Burger, which we haven't been to in quite a while. They managed to remind us why we stopped going -- they are chronically understaffed and somehow it takes 2 hours to get a burger and a milkshake. Not that I mind wasting time at a restaurant with friends after diving, but we were hungry and thirsty!

After reviewing the bathymetry maps, I think we were somewhere along the ridge that Thumbs Up is atop. David put a report up on his site, which has a nice map of the path we think we took. Check it out here.