PBJ-Annex

Around the middle of the week, Kevin was looking for a dive buddy for a tech dive on Friday. Apparently he was pretty desperate to get in a dive, and he had some 18/45 in a set of doubles that he really didn't want to have 18/45 in, hence the desire to do a tech dive. Rob said he could be convinced to go do a dive at Lobos, but I remained unconvinced. But I told them if they could line up a boat it would probably be worth missing work. Rob called up Jim, who was already in the process of lining up someone to drive the boat so he and Joakim could dive. Sweet. So it was on. Unfortunately the forecast was not looking too spectacular, so it was looking like it was going to be an in-the-bay dive. But you never know until you go take a look. We went to take a look and decided that Carmel was not going to happen. But the Pinos area looking promising. After a bit of driving around with Rob's GPS, we settled on a site that none of us had dived before. Jo looked nervous when it was divulged that the numbers were just from a spot Rob saw on the bathymetry, but which no one we knew had actually dived. In any case, it was somewhere not too far from Pinos Buoy Jackpot, so how bad could it be?

The site was a pinnacle from about 130 feet to about 170 feet. Actually I might describe it more as a ridge from 140 to 170, with a little bump that went up to 130 feet. The viz was pretty nice on the way down but got a bit dark at the bottom. Not like night dark, but definitely not that bright blue winter viz I'm still waiting for. We dropped down near the shallow bump and went down the side and basically ran the length of the ridge until we got to the end, and then turned around. With some stops for photos and poking around, of course. The cool critter finds included a closed up basket star (I was quite impressed that I found it... we never see them closed up but they must be around!), oodles of simnia snails, and, my favorite... a juvenile yelloweye! We finished up the dive on the shallow bump. There was a big bunch of fish eggs nestled in a piece of hydrocoral near the top, and a kelp greenling swimming around like he owned the place. So, I'm pretty sure they were kelp greenling eggs. On the same piece of hydrocoral I saw some sort of weird zoanthid thing growing on the hydrocoral... like the ones that you see on gorgonians, but on a piece of hydrocoral. I've never seen that before.

There were quite a few sea nettles on deco. I would describe it as a beautiful number of sea nettles, that were manageable but slightly annoying. Not a scary number like at Ballbuster a couple weeks before. But there was definitely some batting of sea nettles to avoid getting stung. The viz was quite nice on the way up -- it was definitely a scenic day to be sharing the midwater with the nettles.

I almost forgot to mention that the Escapade's newest crew member was along for the ride -- Bullet. He is Ed and Julia's adorable and surprisingly non-spazzy Jack Russell terrier. He's such a cutey, I wanted to try to stick him in my pocket and sneak off with him. Unfortunately despite much discussion of it, we forgot to take a picture.

Lunch at Siamese Bay. Yum yum.