First night dive, Breakwater

[Jak Crow]

Did my first night dives last night at Breakwater. First one along the wall, where I came across several rainbow nudibranch, which I had never seen in person before. Second was out to the rocks off to the left of the beach entrance, which ended up turning into a take-as-many-photos-of-tiny-red-octopus-as-I-can dive. Since I got my dive cert in January and up to this point, I had only seen one octopus and only for a few seconds in 40 dives. I thoroughly enjoyed these dives and will be looking to do more as soon as I can. Which makes me ask for anyone interested to let me know along with availability.

 

[dwashbur]

I can't go with you because I'm currently living in the Puget Sound area, but when I lived in the Monterey area I loved doing night dives at the Breakwater. That was where I found the only actual shark I've ever seen; my buddies and I came upon a 3 foot swell shark just sitting there on the rocks, apparently sleeping. That place is great during the day, but just amazing at night. Congratulations on the cool finds, and hope you have many more!
What kind of flatfish is that????

 

[Enhydra]

My guess is that it's a halibut.

Based on what I can gather, the easy way to identify halibut from other flatfishes is by looking at the lateral line and the caudal fin. The lateral line has a very high arch over the pectoral fin and the caudal fin has an upper and lower indentation. I can't see the lateral line in the picture so I'm calling it based on the dorsal and ventral fins.

 

[Guy Alcala]

I can't go with you because I'm currently living in the Puget Sound area, but when I lived in the Monterey area I loved doing night dives at the Breakwater. That was where I found the only actual shark I've ever seen; my buddies and I came upon a 3 foot swell shark just sitting there on the rocks, apparently sleeping. That place is great during the day, but just amazing at night. Congratulations on the cool finds, and hope you have many more!
What kind of flatfish is that????

My ability to ID flatfish is limited, but the most common ones you see at BW are sanddabs. I don't know how big the one in the picture is, but Speckled Sanddabs are on the small side, just over 7" max. I'd vote for a Speckled rather than Pacific Sanddab:

Flatfish Species Index

Guy

 

[Jak Crow]

I can't go with you because I'm currently living in the Puget Sound area, but when I lived in the Monterey area I loved doing night dives at the Breakwater. That was where I found the only actual shark I've ever seen; my buddies and I came upon a 3 foot swell shark just sitting there on the rocks, apparently sleeping. That place is great during the day, but just amazing at night. Congratulations on the cool finds, and hope you have many more!
What kind of flatfish is that????

I've yet to see a shark while diving, and I'm not sure what kind of flatfish that was, only that it was around 6 inches long and not the same as the small ones you usually see in the sand here.

 

[bkyaffe]

Hey! I'm around for night (or am) dives thurs, fri or sat. PM me.

I'd love to check out Lover's, too.

Ben