Skills and Quick Lobos Tour

Our plan for Saturday had originally been to do a fun dive at Lobos, followed by a skills dive. For some reason I wasn't feeling like I was going to have the energy to do a skills dive after the fun was finished, so we decided to do the skills dive first, and then the fun dive (depending on conditions). So we schlepped all of the gear into the water (it was quite a lot of gear, since we wanted to practice ascents with bottles switched, which meant we each needed a distinct set of bottles), and scootered out to 50 or 60 feet. We put up a line and then we practiced a few ascents. The practice did not go as well as we had hoped, but after about 60 minutes we decided we had had enough. The water was surprisingly "warm" at 51 Tec2g degrees, so we decided to just go for a fun dive straight from there, rather than schlep back in and do a surface interval.

We decided to do a little tour of the left side of Lobos. The plan as to hit Lone Metridium, the Sisters, and Beto's. The viz was about average -- the water was quite blue and it was really bright, but there was a bit of particulate in the water. After a fly-by of Lone Metridium, we headed out to the first sister. We perused that for a bit. My back was bothering me (seems to be standard for scootering with many bottles), so from there we headed homeward instead of going to the other sisters. Rob was also kind enough to relieve me of one of my bottles :) We hit Beto's and then stopped at the wolf eel to say hello. From there, we kicked around a little in that area. We noticed a lingcod guarding his eggs along the vertical crack right by the wolf eel. We swam a bit north from there, and unsuccessfully looked for the resident warbonnet. While looking around there I did find a really "big" Diaphorodoris lirulatocauda. Well, big for that species. After a little while, we decided to head in.

No pictures, due to the last minute change of plans.

'Branching at the Aquarium

Since the conditions were so bad at the Breakwater, we decided to hit the Aquarium in the afternoon, in hopes of actually seeing something interesting. We got there about 45 minutes before closing, so we just had time to hit our favorite spots. It turned out to be quite a treat. The water was hazy, from the crappy water being pulled in from the bay. It was the haziest I have ever seen the water there. But that did not deter us from scouring the tanks for nudibranchs. They have a couple of tanks that are supposed to have nudibranchs including a dedicated nudibranch tank (which is pretty new, it's near the penguins upstairs), but they often appear in other tanks as well. So we are always looking around just in case. The best find was in the skeleton shrimp tank, where we found a pair of Polycera atra. I've only seen one ever before, so that was exciting. We also found Spanish shawls in that tanks as well as in the pier pilings tank. The dedicated nudibranch tank was full of nudis. It seems to be quite variable in terms of both the number and species in there. Today they had several Dirona picta, which I have never seen before. There were also tons of Dorids in there.

We also visited the Melibe exhibit, and the Pacific Spiny Lumpsuckers in the tank nearby. I think they are the cutest animals at the aquarium, even cuter than the sea otters! Speaking of otters, I was delighted to find a tiny cat-toy-sized stuffed sea otter at the gift shop. Pepper was quite pleased with the selection. Unfortunately Oreo only likes tiny toys, so she's not really a fan.

Really Bad Viz

Saturday and Sunday, we were supposed to be videoing for a Fundies class at the Breakwater. The viz was incredibly bad, however, which resulted in the dives being called early on both days. It was particularly unpleasant when we first dropped down to setup the line course. Once we had the line in, it wasn't so bad, since at least we had that to follow :) By the time I was up for video'ing, the viz was so bad on the bottom that I gave up even attempting to video. I was able to video the ascents, however, since it got progressively better as we got shallower. From about 20' up, it was definitely video'able. Sunday we looked at Monastery and CRB but decided not to dive based on the conditions. That was too bad, since the viz looked way better on the Carmel side. When we went in to setup the line on Sunday, we were quite enthusiastic about how much better the viz. I would guess it was about 8', which is really plenty of viz for a class on a line. We got to the surface and met up with Beto and the students and told them the good news. By the time everyone got situated and we made it down to the bottom, the swampy less than 5' viz had engulfed the spot we were on. Hmph. We called it early, and the class had to be postponed to a later date.

Rob and I decided to swim in underwater after we finished on Sunday. There turned out to be really good viz (until we silted it out), from about 15' in. While we were swimming along, goofing off over the sand, I saw a little plume of sand which I couldn't identify the source of. Rob later told me there was a pacific electric ray that I had scared from the sand. Unfortunately I totally missed it! There were also lots of those little olive snails out mating in the sand. That was literally all there was to report.

Small Boat, Big Seas

On Friday, we had plans to dive from Phil's boat. The swell forecast was not looking too promising, thought luckily I was busy enough that I didn't get around to looking at it until a fellow Kitty sent it to me on Thursday. So at least I didn't spend the week fretting about it. Both the wind and the swell forecasts were not very encouraging -- something like 10 to 11 foot swell, and 20 to 30 knot winds. But we were undeterred. Rob has been wanting to dive E3/Deep E3 (both in one dive, via scooter) for a while, but it's always the backup. So we were thinking we might finally end up going there (as Rob says, "Phil can always make it to E3"). We pulled in at 8-ish, just behind Phil. The conditions in/around the cove looked a bit sloshy. I disappeared to the bathroom, and when I returned, everyone was gone. I figured they were up on the hill, scrutinizing the conditions. Indeed they were, and it was super windy up there. Phil told us E3 was a no-go. Eek. He drew an imaginary line from where we were to Cypress Point and told us we could only dive to the right of the line. We asked about Outer Outer Pinnacles, but apparently that was on the wrong side of the line. So after scrounging around in our various GPS units, we came up with a list of three possible sites -- Montana and two sites we'd never dived before (one that Phil had, one that I think Rob pulled from the bathymetry maps).

So we headed out in search of Phil's spot, or wherever we happened to end up. The swells were big, but it wasn't too choppy, so it really didn't make me want to barf. However, I did contemplate the fact that the ocean is very big, and the boat is very small. I asked Phil if there was a small craft advisory and he laughed at me. I was sitting quietly in my little corner of the boat, trying to stay in my happy place, and I really couldn't hear what the boys were talking about (had the 12mm Otter Bay artillery helmet on). The next thing you know, Phil tells me we have crossed the line of demarcation and was that alright with me. We were headed to Outer Outer Pinnacles. Woohoo. In our zeal to get in the water, we dropped the hook at a different anchorage than usual. I think we were southeast of the usual anchorage. We dropped on a structure in about 130 feet of water, but as we headed southwest, we had to go over sand for some time before making it to the usual area. As we passed a little pinnaclet in the sand, I slowed down when I saw the trilineata sponge, to look for slugs. I didn't see any, and Rob and Kevin were still on the trigger, so I continued on. Just as I started to go, I did a double take -- there was a Tochuina tetraquetra. I waited for the boys to realize I had detached, and signaled for them to come back. Then it took me a moment to find the slug, worried briefly that it was a hallucination (you could only really see it from one direction).

After that, we continued across the sand and eventually found a ridge running north-south, that had a little sand channel at the bottom, and a little rock ledge running down the center of the channel. On that ledge was a vase sponge, which Rob started taking some shots of. There was another much less attractive vase sponge (it had furry brown-ness on it) nearby on the main ridge. This area looked very similar to the ridge where we first saw vase sponges at OOP, and I wondered if it was a continuation of that same ridge. After that, we continued on and eventually found our way to another familiar spot, which we had been to on that same first dive at OOP. I had just come to the conclusion that it was probably the same spot, when I saw a starry rockfish. I had seen one in that same spot before, so he must be a resident. I showed him to Rob as he backed into a little overhang. This spot was at the end of a channel between two walls, and we headed down that channel. The last time we were here, we had gone the other direction, so this was new to us. At this point we were heading north, the direction that we had planned to head before starting our ascent. We stopped and poked around on the two walls of the channel, and Kevin posed for some pictures with Rob. Eventually we continued north, and ended up crossing a rubble field, a small patch of reef, and another rubble field. Eventually we came to a small pinnacle in about 120' with palm kelp, which remind me a lot of some of the stuff over by the pinnacles (which makes sense, since we were headed that way).

We considered whether to hang out in this area for a few more minutes, but I decided to thumb it, since it was cold, and we had that chilly deco hang ahead of us. Brrr, it was chilly. The deco was fairly uneventful. There was a small bag shoot malfunction that resulted in two bags being shot, with Rob and Kevin each sailing along on a spool. At 20', I found a really cool shrimp (I guess) hanging in the water -- it had really long legs. It was very odd, definitely the highlight of the deco :) Getting back on the boat was a bit of an ordeal. Or rather, bobbing in the water while we waited to take turns sprinting over to the boat to offload gear was the truly harrowing experience. After what seemed like forever bobbing around in the big waves, it was my turn to reboard the boat. Or rather to be reboarded by Phil and Rob :) I was sad to see that Phil hadn't brought his neat little ladder contraption along, though I admitted to him that I wouldn't have wanted to take my fins off to climb the ladder in those conditions. The ride back was uneventful. Phil had the land the boat on the trailer -- the big swell and low tide made it a bit dicey.

Wow, just thinking about those big waves while I write this is making me feel a little seasick.

Cats in boxes...

I'm thinking of giving the folks at Cats in Sinks a run for their money. The concept is cats in boxes... Here is the first candidate:

Calculus of dive gear packing

After our recent experiences with dive travel and baggage limits, we decided to avert future ticket-counter reshuffling by weighing each piece of gear to create a quick-reference guide for packing:

Gear item	Dry weight (lbs.)
Drysuit (DUI TLS350) in bag	8.5-9.5
DUI Rockboots (pair)	2.4
Backgas regs (Apeks DS4/TX50) + gauges	7.5
Stage/deco reg (Apeks TX100)	3.6
Stage/deco reg (MK25/G250)	2.5
Halcyon Al BP	4.2
DeepSeaSupply SS BP	8.0
Halcyon 40lbs Evolve wing	2.3
XL Jetfins (pair)	5.0
Turtle fins (pair)	5.8
Pocket contents (wetnotes, SMB/spool, backup mask, airhorn, stage leash)	3.2
Scout backup light (with Batteries)	0.6
Argon reg	0.2
Double-ender boltsnap	0.2
Yoke/DIN adapter	0.8
9Ah NiMH battery	3.3
Helios/Salvo 9Ah canister	1.4
Halcyon 18W/Salvo 21W lighthead	2.3
Halcyon boatbag	1.9
Halcyon 4.5 SMB/150' spool	1.4
Diving Concepts drygloves (pair)	0.8

A Dozen Needles in a Haystack

On Saturday, John, Rob, and I were planning a little expedition to Twin Peaks to document the Aldisa cooperi that we saw there a couple weeks ago. This time Rob would have his camera, rigged for macro, no less. Last time we saw them, they were near the bottom of the big peak, so we were planning for a slightly deeper dive than the usual Twin Peaks run, and packed the appropriate gas for it. When we got to Lobos, I ran into Brenna, who had some exciting news about a recent slug find (Spanish shawls with egg ribbons found at Ballbuster -- there had been some speculation that they only mate further south). We talked about some other interesting slug sitings we'd each had lately, and she mentioned the mystery Okenia that Rob and I found (once) almost a year ago. She told me she had been keeping an eye out for it, which I found amusing, since I had sort of given up on actually looking for it, thinking it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, or more like a needle in a sea of haystacks. She was on the Beach Hopper (which was doing one of its Lobos dive days), so she had to head out, and as she walked down the ramp, the last thing she said to me was "Find that Okenia!". Yea right.

John was running late, but when he finally showed up, we argued about who had to lead. I refused, since I have led the last two long scooter journeys we have done. I wanted to be a follower today. So Rob agreed to lead. We told him where we had found the Aldisas (since he wasn't on that dive), and we came up with a plan based on our expected depth range. I swam our gear out to the float while John was getting into his drysuit. It was a good excuse to get into the water, since it was pretty warm on the surface, and I prefer the swim than the lug :) We finally got geared up (just after Team Bunny arrived, who we chatted with for a little while about their proposed expedition to Beto's Reef), and headed into the water. The viz was really good right at the ramp, so we were excited about our prospects. We surface scotoed out to about 35 feet, where we could still see the bottom, and dropped in the sand channel. After a little fun with masks, we headed out. It was a pretty uneventful travel to the Sisters, via Lone Metridium. We hit the first sister, and I could literally see the second sister from there (and the shadow of the third, I swear!). The viz was just incredible. We headed out along the Road, and almost immediately, I saw a Doriopsilla spaldingi -- an exciting enough slug, in my opinion, to stop the team to check it out. The iridescent ring around the slug was particularly glowy -- more blue than white. After we looked it over, we continued on. Very shortly after that, I saw the sponge that the Aldisas eat, and I couldn't believe my eyes, but there was a yellow-orange slug sitting on top of it. I stopped us, again, to check if it was A. cooperi (vs. A. sanguinea), and there were the tell-tale spots down its back. I showed it to Rob, and he asked if he should take some pictures of it. Of course!

So at this point we were about 10 minutes into the dive, at 120', and we'd already completed our "mission". Sweet! Now we could just have some fun at the peaks! After Rob finished up taking pics, we were about to get going when Rob spied a big lingcod hanging out under an overhang, with its mouth hanging over. We swam over to take a look, and then were about to leave again, when John signaled us. He innocently pointed to the reef, and I looked over to where he pointed. In hindsight, I can't believe my reg stayed in my mouth, because I'm sure my jaw dropped open when I saw not one, but two little mystery Okenias. The next minute was filled with screaming through my reg at Rob. I was not just excited that we had found it again, but we had found two! We have a permit to collect up to two of these little guys, since, in the event that it actually is an unknown species, two are required to authenticate that. I wasn't even sure if John knew what he had found, but he did. I practically mauled him as I told him he rocked (yes, I now have a hand signal for "you rock"). As Rob was taking some photos of it, we found three or four more within about 10 feet of those two. It must have been small white nudi day on the Road, because there were also dozens (or maybe even hundreds) of Diaphoradoris, and at least a dozen Aegires. But the Okenia stood out easily, like a ball of whiskers sitting on the reef. By this point I had decided that we probably weren't going to make it to Twin Peaks -- I was way to giddy to embark on the long scooter ride out there. A couple of things surprised me about the slug this time around. One was that it seemed so much bigger than I remembered it. Objectively, it was still a tiny slug. But after studying the photo Rob had taken of it for so long, I could look at the details of it, and actually process what I was seeing. The first time I found it, it was just like... on there's some weird looking nudibranch. Another thing that surprised me, which is related, is how easy it was to pick them out on the reef. I've always found that after I see a small critter the first time, I form a pattern in my mind that makes it easy to pick out, even as I scan the reef fairly quickly. Looking at Rob's photo over the past year definitely helped to form that pattern. All this time I have been looking for it, thinking I would have to be scanning a patch of reef so slowly to possibly find it, but now I think just the standard nudibranch perusal would do it.

Disclaimer: don't try this at home, kids, unless you have a permit to collect at Lobos. After Rob got shots of the first several that we found, we decided we would collect two. When we originally got the permit to collect them, I started carrying a little piece of gladware on a boltsnap on deeper dives, but eventually that got tiresome and ended up living in the garage. So instead Rob and I had a backup ziploc bag that we had been passing back and forth between our wetnotes. Luckily I still had it in my wetnotes. So we carefully removed two slugs from the reef (one of them came with a bit of its substrate, which we figured would be useful to identify what it eats, plus it would give it something to eat for the road). I was a little sad to collect them, but it was definitely better that there were so many of them around, so I didn't feel like I was plucking the last two of the species from the ocean. In the end, we saw probably around a dozen (although I stopped counting after nine). I couldn't stop thinking about Brenna's last comment to me as she walked into the water :) Once we were finished with that, we discussed what to do next. At this point, I figured if we headed out to the peaks, we'd basically get there in time to turn around. So I suggested we just stick around the area for a while and then head in. So that's what we did. It was amazing what a slug fest it was out there. In addition to all of the white guys, and a lot of the usual suspects, there were quite a few of the Aldisas.

Eventually we decided to head in, and just as we were about to get to the Sisters, I saw another D. spaldingi. I'm not sure I've ever seen more than one on a dive before. Makes me wonder what we might have found had we gone further down the road. When we got to the Sisters, Rob suggested we head across to Beto's, which I always love to do in good viz. There were lots of canary rockfish over the sand on the way, as is typical out there. The viz was so good, I could clearly see Beto's more than 30 seconds before we actually got to it (which, using the 150 ft/min scooter speed estimate, tells me the viz was over 75 feet). When we got to Beto's we headed in along it, stopping to say hello to the wolf eel. From there we skirted Sea Mount, and following the kelp-sand interface of the sand channel until we got to 70' and switched to our bottles. We hung out there, and had a little wetnotes discussion about how we couldn't wait to tell Clinton about our find. Rob was very carefully carrying the ziploc bag as he scootered, which was amusing to watch. In order to vent he had to stop, so he could move the bag to his right hand. So it was a slightly slow trip in on the sand channel, but it matched our deco schedule anyway. At 30', we ran into Suzanne and Nathalie, and showed them our specimens. I wrote them a little note about what it was. We eventually scootered in the whole way to the ramp, pausing for a while at 20'. Don helped us (or the nudis, really) out of the water, and we found a bigger, more stable vessel to keep them in (a mask box). After a bit of scrambling with John's Blackberry (which has the smallest, worst keyboard known to man), I managed to find the phone number of Gary McDonald, who had volunteered to preserve any specimens we eventually found. After discussing with him when we could bring them by and how to keep them alive int he meantime, we decided we could do another dive, with them safely bobbing in a huge bin of seawater in the back of the divemobile. We also called Clinton (actually Rob and John both called him, so he had a couple of missed calls when he got back from his dives, which hopefully didn't alarm him too much), who unfortunately couldn't manage to get over to Lobos to see the slug :(

We had originally planned to survey the transects for dive 2, but we decided that we had done enough for the nudibranch project on dive 1, and we would just have fun on dive 2 (fun being looking for nudibranchs at Granite Point). Rob left his camera behind (which I knew he would regret, but I didn't want to pressure him to bring it), and I volunteered to lead the dive. Just as we were about to get going, we noticed Team Bunny heading in, and I just had to show them the slugs, so we waited for them to get in. After we wow'd them with our nudibranch prowess, we headed into the water (Kenn escorting me down the low-tide-ramp, as he has become accustomed to doing). The viz was still really good, although with the sun lower in the sky, the water wasn't quite as bright. We headed out on the sand channel and before you know it, we were at the main wall. Rob had requested that we got to (what we refer to as) "the hydrocoral spot", so we motored until we got to the spot, and then clipped off the scoots and kicked around there. There was an impressive showing of nudibranchs out there. We saw the usual dorids, more Aegeris, several Dendronotus albus, tons of trilineatas, quite a few Limacias, four Hilton's, and an Adalaria jannae. Of course Rob regretted not bringing his camera. We left there with the plan to hang out on the east side of Middle Reef ont he way in. We got back to the end of Middle Reef and took a left to get to the east side. By the time we got in there, I decided I was took cold to do more than a fly-by, so that's all we did, and we hopped over to the sand channel and headed into the cove. At some point (as we were along the wall of the cove), Rob's scooter died, so we just ascended there and kicked in.

We managed to keep the slugs alive until the handoff to Gary, which was a relief. At his place, we looked at them under the microscope, and I was relieved to see they were still alive and kicking. I think that the one that was on his substrate was a bit happier with the trip than the other. Gary also gave us some good tips about various nudis to keep an eye out for, and showed us some of his excellent pictures. His office is like a little nudibranch wonderland :) He put the nudis in a tank and got some shots of his own, which are here.

On the way to dinner, I was telling Rob how I think that Brenna was my good luck charm -- she said to find the Okenia, and we did! So Rob has dubbed her the "nudibranch whisperer".

All of Rob's pics are here.