May 17th Saturday Dive Report Break Water

[mikeguerrero]

It was a great day of diving. I got a chance to bring down my dive buddy Daniel which kept the fire going with his constant jokes.

Even though I got stung in the face by a Sea Nettle it was still a great day of diving. I'll have to be more carefule next time navigating the Metridiums full of them jellies...

It was fun getting to go out again with Sarah and her dive friends, Tom, Katherine, and the Scotish fellow...

Here are some of the pics I took... I'm working on the Macro...

 

[sarita75]

Nice otter impression I was doing. That's a hard position to hold ... hehehehe. I like the bat star photo with the algae around it, that's beautiful.

 

[sarita75]

I have not been diving since our trip to Florida at the end of March so I was really looking forward to spending a Saturday in Monterey and diving with some new friends from ScubaBoard (and an already known Mike Guerrero). We planned to dive at the Breakwater in order to make it a nice, simple dive that wouldn’t be overly-exerting for anyone since we were a group of mixed experience levels, new gear and other such things.

I arrived at the Breakwater at 7:30 AM, fully expecting to find a half empty parking lot and a good spot near the top of the grass. Imagine my surprise, however, when I saw the mass amounts of people, all over the grass, the parking areas, the lower lots and wall. I parked and walked along the upper lot to find Tom, who was easy to find in light of his bright blue PT Cruiser. Soon Katherine came around and we were off to get a lesson from Tom on how to lineup the points in order to get to the Metridium Field. On our way back, Neil, Mike and Daniel found us and soon we were planning the day and getting geared up.

Our first dive was scheduled to start at about 9 am and my computer indicates that we dove at 9:20, so we must have entered the water around the scheduled time since the kick out to the Metridium Field takes a while. We landed the Metridium perfectly having had Tom line us all up but descending we were in a swarm of sea nettles, large and small. They were everywhere and in an underwater environment, you need to have eyes all over your head as you must remain conscious of what is above, below and surrounding you. Unfortunately because of the sheer number of the jellies, both Mike and Neil got stung on their faces and I can only hope that both of them are recovering from the stings.

After swimming around the Metridiums and surround areas, Neil and I began our 210-heading swim back to the shore. As we got into the shallows, however, I noticed that we were surrounded by quite a different landscape than is typical of the shore along the beach. Surfacing, we found we were slightly south of the beach and so we headed back at about 150-160 degrees and came up near the beach in about 5 feet of water. The visibility on the dive could have been better, especially around the Metridium Fields since I thought that we were out quite a bit further than the students, so I was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t as great as I had hoped. That being said, the dive was wonderful – full of life, kelp and a buddy with just about an equal air consumption given our tanks – so I was happy.

After a nice surface interval in the hot sun, we swapped the tanks and geared up to go out again. This time the plan was to kick out a ways, then take a 300 degree compass heading and follow the shoreline south at about 30 feet. This course would take us over the remains of the pipes and infrastructure of the old cannery facilities that historically dotted the coast of Monterey. As I had never actually even considered diving that locale but having had witnessed a bit of it on our return from the Metridium Field, I was quite interested in diving it. Kicking out, we encountered the bubbles from a group of students who were obviously underneath us. As to avoid disturbing them and to steer clear of any finned-up areas, we went out a bit further hoping to find a clear patch in which to begin our dive. Soon we were descending and heading along the 300 degree heading and off on our dive. Checking out a pile of rocks, Neil and I were separated from Tom and Katherine, which wasn’t a big deal as we knew they were buddied up having discussed the buddy plans on the surface. The dive was beautiful although I think that we were slightly too deep as we didn’t see as much of the pipes and other areas and saw more sandy patches covered by bat stars. When we returned, we headed a closer to shore and hit the pipes and saw lot more, including a pipe covered in barnacles,

Overall, I was really amazed by the sheer numbers of nudibranchs that were present – doris, rainbow nudis (Dendronotus iris), etc. What was most amazing was the mass presence of Opalescent Nudibranch (hermissenda crassicornis) – large, small and super-small. It was a great day for finding whelks and their eggs all over the Metridium Field and tiny little halibut and sanddabs floundering around in the sand. The sun was shining and I think we all had a great day.

Thank you Tom for all your assistance getting us to sites. Thank you to everyone who showed up - Katherine, Neil (who is Scottish, Mike ... not British), Mike and Daniel. I had a great day and hope you all did as well!

 

[sarita75]

Here are some of my favorite photos from the day ....

"Don't go too far":

I love the crab hanging out at the bottom of the tube anemone that I never noticed while taking these photos - only noticed it afterwards:

All photos (including photos of Katherine, Tom and Neil): http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/3145

 

[mikeguerrero]

Sarah,

Your pics are un-believable... Can you tell me how you re-format them for uploading? On my camera I have the highest resolution but I don't know how to crop them and still keep the resolution...

When I zoom in on the camera, they appear so sharp and rich like what you have uploaded but I cannot get the resolution on the PC...

Give me a nudge in the right direction...

MG

 

[sarita75]

I shoot macro exclusively in the local area, not sure if that helps or hinders. As for size, mine were taken on a medium/fine size, and some needed to be resized with Photoshop elements to (1500x---- [keeping proportions]) so that they would fit within SB parameters. Not sure it that helps you at all.

 

[micboucher]

Sounds like a great day of diving and great pics!! Thanks for sharing.

 

[kmmkiwi]

I had a wonderful day of diving. It was a day of firsts and personal records for me . Deepest dive to date, longest bottom time to date, first time diving with a camera, first time diving with jellyfish, first time out to the metridiums, first time seeing a whale. hmmm what other personal records did I set?? All in all, an awesome day for me.

It was a pleasure to meet and dive with everyone, Tom, Sarah, Neil, Mike, & Daniel. (oh yeah thanks for the name correction Mike... I saw that ) Thank you Sarah for getting everyone together. Looking forward to dive with you again!

 

[sarita75]

Katherine - You forgot to mention it was your First Double-Digit Dive!

It was great diving with you as well, and I look forward to diving with you again in the future! Oh, and don't forget those Trader Joes Chicken Sicilian Sausages .... YUM!!

 

[micboucher]

Oh, and don't forget those Trader Joes Chicken Sicilian Sausages .... YUM!!

Oh, I love those sausages! I put them in my pasta sauce, along with some ground turkey...yum.