Ed Cooper's Wall

We were on the Escapade on Sunday for a tech boat.  We had heard that the viz in Carmel was pretty terrible (at least above 100') on Saturday, so Rob decided to pack macro.  The forecast was for a bit of wind and not much swell.  In reality, it was more like a bit of swell and not much wind.  There was some wind, more than none, but not much.  But the swell was bigger than I expected.  We made it down to Yankee Point and then for some reason we went back up to Lobos to look at Naia's/Ed Cooper's Wall.  We didn't turn back from Yankee Point due to weather (I don't think, though it did seem to be getting a little snottier down there), I think it was just because we didn't think to look at those sites until we were already past them.  The direction of the wind was favorable for diving these sites, because it would push us offshore (away from the Point Lobos park boundary).  We ended up settling on Ed Cooper's Wall.

The viz was quite bad on top, and once again, we found ourselves practically glued to the line on the way down.  By 100 feet or so, the viz was still terrible, and I was wondering if I was going to have to literally run right into the reef before I saw it.  It wasn't quite that bad, but almost :)  It did eventually open up before I ran into the reef, but not very far above the reef.  We hit the reef at maybe 130-ish feet, and as we got deeper the viz actually got really good, but really dark.  There was also quite a bit of current on the bottom.  In fact, as I was finally approaching the reef as I followed the line down, I felt like I was barely moving on the trigger!  We drifted out deeper with the current, drifting along the wall.

The one really notable thing about this dive was that we saw a bunch of little octopuses sitting around on the reef.  Not too surprising considering how dark it was and that the octopus have apparently been out in crazy numbers recently (at more usual octopus spots like the breakwater), but still unusual to see.  Other than that, it was just good viz and a lot of fish.  We drifted out and then eventually turned it and came up a bit shallower, and headed back to where we started.  As we got back to the shallower area where we started, there were a lot of juvenile rockfish skittering along right on top of the reef.  We eventually got to a spot where we decided to just hang out for the rest of the dive there.  The dive was called early, inexplicably, because of, errmmm, someone not knowing how to read their gauge (it was a reverse-Ted maneuver).  I had been pretty cold on the bottom, and the thing that kept me from calling it early was that I thought it would probably be pretty warm on deco, and I was not disappointed.  By the time we got to 100' for a deep stop, the water was super murky and warm!  So there wasn't much to see on deco, but at least it was toasty.

After all of the teams were collected by the boat, we decided to skip a second dive, since the visibility above 100' definitely didn't seem like it would make for a good second dive.  So we headed to La Tortuga for dive 2 instead.

Rob was shooting macro, and I think he got a few pictures, but still hasn't produced any processed photos.  So I am going ahead and posting this without pictures, but will add them later if they appear.