Rob and I hopped on the BAUE rec boat sort of at the last minute. We tried to go to Soberanes Wall, but it was a bit too swishy looking on the surface, so we headed to Flintstones instead. It was a bit surgy in some spots, but overall, the conditions were quite nice. Viz was very good for the most part, though more green than blue, with some slightly murky areas. This was the first dive in quite a while that I did in open circuit. Oh man is it easier to dive than the CCR! Rob kept sending me up shallow to pose for silhouette pictures, which would be a total pain in the 'breather, but was nice and easy in open circuit!
The highlight of the dive was finding a cabezon on eggs. When we happened upon it, it got a bit riled up and started swimming around in circles, so we had to wait for a while, probably like 5 minutes, for the fish to simmer down and pose next to the eggs again. Then Rob finally got like a single shot before the swimming in circles started again. But the picture turned out pretty well, I think.
For the second dive, we went to Locals' Ledge. The last time few times I've been to Locals' Ledge, it's looked pretty not great due to the barnacle invasion. The barnacles seem to have died down, though our favorite hydrocoral spot has definitely not recovered. And now there is a new nuisance there... sea urchins! Some areas of the site look like southern California urchin barrens :( So, that was a bit of a disappointment. Add to that the surface, and it wasn't the best Locals' Ledge dive ever. We got a bit lost on the way back from the hydrocoral spot (I'm going to blame that on everything looking different due to the urchin invasion :P), but I figured it we started our ascent, we'd probably see some bubbles and find the herd. Instead I found the downline, so I guess we weren't that fair off the mark after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment