Cannery Point

All week I had been very wishy washy about diving this weekend, so I never managed to make plans for the weekend. But Rob was heading down to Monterey for the weekend to help with a Fundies class, so Friday night I decided to bring my gear and go with him. I figured I could hike or something at Lobos on Saturday and then find someone to dive with on Sunday. But of course, when I got to Lobos, there were plenty of people to dive with, and I did have my gear. Kevin and Karl wouldn't take no for an answer. After some scooter and stage bottle swapping so that everyone had a scoot (Rob had brought his scooter to loan to Cynthia, but I didn't bring mine) and enough gas, I went diving with Kevin, Cynthia, Dionna and Karl. I was in team 2, buddied up with Karl. The plan was to head out along the pinnacles/ridges by Cannery Point, toward Bluefish.

We scootered out along the sand channel on the surface, and dropped in about 40 feet. The viz was pretty bad. The water was green and milky. We headed out down the sand channel, and the viz really didn't improve. We turned at Hole in the Wall and headed out a ridge or two past the Lone Metridium. Then we clipped off and kicked around. Viz still had not improved very much -- it was probably 20 to 30 feet. We kicked around for 25 or so minutes, with the occasional short scoot to a different spot. We were in 50 to 60 feet of water for the most part. We saw a couple of notable things. First, there were tons (dozens) of Hilton's nudibranchs. I was pretty excited when I saw the first couple, and then we got to certain spots where I could just scan the wall and see slug after slug. Pretty neat! Kevin signalled me to come look at something, and he showed me a Cuthona divae (next to a pair of Hilton's, of course). It was a pretty big one too. Other than that, we saw a bunch of sheepheads, and I found a sculpin (snub-nose I think) with a longfin sculpin in its mouth! I actually first noticed it because another fish was tussling with the one who had the fish in its mouth. He looked like he had made this great catch but wasn't really sure what to do with it :) It was pretty neat, but it made me sad that he had killed such a pretty fish! Eventually Kevin called turn and we headed in. We scootered in to the worm patch, and ascended there.

We decided to pass on a second dive, and Cynthia, Kevin and I headed to Wild Plum for lunch. I've never been there before, but it has now been added to the list of approved post-dive lunch venues :) Then Cynthia took me back to her place to baby sit me (and taste wines) while Rob was finishing up with his Fundies class.