Cynthia's Birthday Boat

On Saturday, we were on the Escapade for a boat that Matt had organized for Cynthia's birthday. Her birthday was actually 2 weeks ago, but schedule logistics prevented the boat from actually being on that date. Unfortunately the conditions were not the best, and we couldn't get outside of the bay :( So Ballbuster it was (isn't it always?).

The water was green on the way down, with sea nettles happily drifting along, but the visibility was okay (not great) on the bottom. It was dark though (isn't it always?). There was quite a current on the bottom. People always say that Ballbuster can have current, but I have never experienced current there that is more than a mild annoyance. But on this particular day, it was actually pretty unpleasant to kick against the current. Of course this did not deter Rob, and instead of tucking behind the pinnacle to hide from the current, he decided we should circumnavigate the pinnacle. Phew. It was a bit of a schlep getting around it, but then we finally came around the corner and got blown back down the other side. Rob was shooting macro -- it seems like it has been ages since he shot macro! Unfortunately he is holding the pictures from the day hostage, so I am going to go ahead and post this without pictures. I will upload them later after I beat them out of him. I would say that the coolest thing we saw on the dive was definitely a juvenile yelloweye rockfish that I found in a crack near the bottom. I was shocked! And Rob even had the right lens! I'm still not sure if he got a decent shot of it or not. Other than that, it was pretty much the usual Ballbuster suspects.

For the second dive, we suggested the shale. I think Rob suggested the anchors, which many of the people on the boat had never dived, gasp. Jim was very uncertain about whether there was actually anything at the site, but he just anchored on the numbers he had and hoped for the best. We had a pretty simple dive... down the line, to the anchors which were maybe 15 feet away. Then we pretty much stuck around on the anchors, Rob searching for little creatures on them. On the way down, we saw a couple of molas at 20 or 30 feet. Then while we were poking around at the anchors (of course after everyone else had scattered), we had a mola close encounter. One of them had this gross wormy parasite thing (with a long, maybe 8 inches, tail) hanging on it. Rob went to work "cleaning" the mola of its parasites. Ewww. It was pretty neat, it has been a while since I have had such a close visit from a mola. There was a giant (scary giant) lingcod hanging out in the anchors. Other than that, it was mostly just cute little sculpins that I found.

Lunch at RG in Monterey, which I had never been to before. I think they have the same service philosophy there as the one in Carmel :)