Today was the Dream Divers Earth Day cleanup beach dive. I arrive at Del Monte Beach at about 7:15am and checked in with the staff. Apparently either I mis-read the flyer or they were running behind, but we didnt start orientation until 9am. After that it was off gear up and then head into the rough seas.
A little before 10 we made our way into the surf. It was a difficult entry for many of the people at the event. We swam out quite a way, to where the warf begins and thats where we dropped down. The vis was not so good, maybe 8′ or so. Also there was some surge, but not as bad as Lobos last weekend. We swam around looking for trash, and came across little things here and there, nothing too exciting. Then after we had swam a ways slightly East of due North I found a dead ray of some kind. It was laying upside down and a spider looking crab that was probably 3 feet across all spread out was eating him up. After finding that I believe we swam NW for a little ways and came across a sunken boat. It looked to be perhaps 12′ or so feet long, it was blue and had quite a bit of life on it. Granted we could have considered it trash had there not been so much life on it and attempted in the surge to bring it to the crane to hoist it out, but that would not have worked in this case. Once we were at the boat I looked down at my compass to get my bearings for us to start heading back and almost lost my buddy due to the surge and poor vis!
On the way back I found a Coors Light can, w00t!
Aside from that not much else other than the patches of really low vis. My guess is some other diver had stirred things up, or perhaps it was from us. On the way back we swam along/under the pier a little, and there was what appeared to be a dead fish COVERED in Sun Stars. Unfortunately, it was a little too surgy so we swam out from under and back over to the wall where we descended. I gave us a nice 3:00 safety stop at about 17 feet and then up we went for our tiring swim back.
On the exit the surf was still rough and made getting out that much more tiring.
DIVE #10: 30′ Depth for 00:48 minutes (I tried a new breathing technique from Bruce and still had 1350 upon ascent) with 55F water temperatures. We had again about 8′ of vis.
A little before 10 we made our way into the surf. It was a difficult entry for many of the people at the event. We swam out quite a way, to where the warf begins and thats where we dropped down. The vis was not so good, maybe 8′ or so. Also there was some surge, but not as bad as Lobos last weekend. We swam around looking for trash, and came across little things here and there, nothing too exciting. Then after we had swam a ways slightly East of due North I found a dead ray of some kind. It was laying upside down and a spider looking crab that was probably 3 feet across all spread out was eating him up. After finding that I believe we swam NW for a little ways and came across a sunken boat. It looked to be perhaps 12′ or so feet long, it was blue and had quite a bit of life on it. Granted we could have considered it trash had there not been so much life on it and attempted in the surge to bring it to the crane to hoist it out, but that would not have worked in this case. Once we were at the boat I looked down at my compass to get my bearings for us to start heading back and almost lost my buddy due to the surge and poor vis!
On the way back I found a Coors Light can, w00t!
Aside from that not much else other than the patches of really low vis. My guess is some other diver had stirred things up, or perhaps it was from us. On the way back we swam along/under the pier a little, and there was what appeared to be a dead fish COVERED in Sun Stars. Unfortunately, it was a little too surgy so we swam out from under and back over to the wall where we descended. I gave us a nice 3:00 safety stop at about 17 feet and then up we went for our tiring swim back.On the exit the surf was still rough and made getting out that much more tiring
.DIVE #10: 30′ Depth for 00:48 minutes (I tried a new breathing technique from Bruce and still had 1350 upon ascent) with 55F water temperatures. We had again about 8′ of vis.
