Sur 20

 We were back on the Escapade on Sunday, to finish off my birthday weekend.  Today it was just me and Rob diving as a team... I couldn't talk Kevin into a third day of fun.  As luck would have it, we had very flat seas, and made it down to Big Sur again.  Two weekends in a row -- it was a birthday miracle :P  Since we had just been at Sur 19 the previous weekend, we went to Sur 20 today.


The conditions on the dive were sort of weird.  The viz was at times (or in spots) very very good, and at other times (or spots), it was very green and murky.  The one upside was that the green water was very warm.  It was pretty strange though, that as we scootered around the pinnacle, we would pass through warm, murky areas, and then pop back out of them into clearer, blue water.  Of course it seemed like every time we found a spot with a really nice patch of hydrocoral, the green water would roll in.  (Rob managed to get some pretty nice pictures despite this.)

We made a somewhat disappointing discovery on the dive, which was that there was quite a bit of fishing gear on the pinnacle.  I guess it's not too surprising, with the changing regulations in the last several years, fishing boats have just moved further south, and we have see fishing boats out there on several occasions.  Still, not awesome to find fishing line and lures here :(  But the fishermen left plenty of fish for us to enjoy, including some nice big lingcod, and a large school of juvenile rockfish.

Our search for whales on the way home today was no more successful than our whale watching on Friday.  Where did they all go?  There were so many whales last week, and poof! all gone!