Shallow Lobos

On Saturday, Rob and I had planned to do some easy, single-tank diving at Lobos. Well, I was diving single tanks, but since we only own two of them, Rob drew the short straw. The plan was to survey two nudibranch transects on dive 1, and to do some unspecified kick dive for dive 2. When we got to Lobos, a few people from Southern California (including Nick and Maciek) was there. They had a friend, David, who was looking for a dive team. So he joined us. For our first dive, we were surveying transects 4 and 5 (the shallow ones). We swam out to about 30' in the sand channel, and then headed over to transect 5 first. I did the counting on both transects. Rob brought his camera, but claims he "got nothing" on the dive. I saw and counted a ton of slugs, but nothing too interesting. I did see a Diaphorodoris lirulatocauda, which I think I have only seen on a transect once and never counted (back when we only counted the ones on a set list). It was kind of surgy and the viz was pretty bad, so I was glad when I was finished. Then we headed out toward transect 4, stopping along the way to visit the wolf eels, who were both in. Once we got to transect 4, I surveyed that one. I sort of dread transect 4, since it seems to always be relatively devoid of slugs, but it had quite a few today. Nothing spectacularly interesting, but basically all of the usual suspects. I noticed that the viz was quite a bit better on top of the wall; I guess the bottom was just stirred up. It was also less surgy out at transect 4. Once we were finished, we headed back in (and Rob cleaned up some line he had run "for practice"). We swam back to the worm patch and ascended there.

For our second dive, we decided to kick a bit further out, to Hole in the Wall and the Cannery Point area, hoping the viz would be a little better. We dropped in the sand channel around 40 feet, and headed out. It was still pretty murky around Hole in the Wall, but as we hopped along the ridges to the west, it eventually cleared up. It was a really nice swim along the tops of the reef, looking down the little walls to the sand. I found a bunch of trilineatas, and one really really cute little fish, which looked familiar, but I had no idea what it was. I showed it to Rob, who had seen (and photographed one) before. He couldn't remember the name of it, so in the meantime I dubbed it the "cutest fish on earth". After chatting with Clinton, he said it was a kelp poacher. Well, I like my name better. By the time we turned the dive, the viz had really improved. We ascended up a wall to about 40 feet and it was really bright up there. We turned the dive and after a brief pause at Hole in the Wall, we headed straight in to the worm patch, and ascended there. Of course Rob didn't bring his camera along on the second dive, so no pics of the super-cute fish :(

We headed to RG with Clinton and Kathy for a little post-dive food and chat. They were amazingly unslow for once.