Thanks Ken. That will really help in choosing my shooting modes. Sounds fantastic. My wife has gone out with Truth Aquatics twice now, once on the Vision. They were hunting trips, though, in November and February. Mostly they were in very shallow water, choked with bull kelp. The two trips coincided with the two huge storms this year and last. Remember the record rain last Nov. when half the hills in LA came sliding down? Yep, she was out during that. And the monster storm January 05, with
monsoon rains and 20 foot seas? She was on the Peace during that one, newly out of Open Water! She had a great time, anyway and has been pushing the liveaboards at me ever since. Fortunately, this one isn't during the school year. Getting away for two days in October for her "business" trip to Grand Cayman is about all the school I can miss.
Catherine, love to show you around. Plenty of room on the 19' rib. There's generally just the two of us, and we've hauled as many as six, though that's a bit "friendly". Shale Island is about 55' in the middle of an area that runs from 65' to 100+ right off Del Monte Beach. There are some huge anchors laying about (the Anchor Farm) and lots of macro subjects from little Octopi to a variety of Rockfish, anemone, nudies and crustaceans in kind of a bleak landscape. Everything hides under the layers of shale.
The Monterey/Carmel area has a huge variety of diving, from Kelp forest to sand, rock ridges and boulders, ten feet off the breakwater wall to 300 feet in the Monterey Canyon off Carmel. (We're rec only-you'll have to ask some of the techies about the Canyonlands.)