Skills and Quick Lobos Tour

Our plan for Saturday had originally been to do a fun dive at Lobos, followed by a skills dive. For some reason I wasn't feeling like I was going to have the energy to do a skills dive after the fun was finished, so we decided to do the skills dive first, and then the fun dive (depending on conditions). So we schlepped all of the gear into the water (it was quite a lot of gear, since we wanted to practice ascents with bottles switched, which meant we each needed a distinct set of bottles), and scootered out to 50 or 60 feet. We put up a line and then we practiced a few ascents. The practice did not go as well as we had hoped, but after about 60 minutes we decided we had had enough. The water was surprisingly "warm" at 51 Tec2g degrees, so we decided to just go for a fun dive straight from there, rather than schlep back in and do a surface interval.

We decided to do a little tour of the left side of Lobos. The plan as to hit Lone Metridium, the Sisters, and Beto's. The viz was about average -- the water was quite blue and it was really bright, but there was a bit of particulate in the water. After a fly-by of Lone Metridium, we headed out to the first sister. We perused that for a bit. My back was bothering me (seems to be standard for scootering with many bottles), so from there we headed homeward instead of going to the other sisters. Rob was also kind enough to relieve me of one of my bottles :) We hit Beto's and then stopped at the wolf eel to say hello. From there, we kicked around a little in that area. We noticed a lingcod guarding his eggs along the vertical crack right by the wolf eel. We swam a bit north from there, and unsuccessfully looked for the resident warbonnet. While looking around there I did find a really "big" Diaphorodoris lirulatocauda. Well, big for that species. After a little while, we decided to head in.

No pictures, due to the last minute change of plans.