Monterey sea lions

[Scubaroo]

Conditions this weekend (apart from the visibility) are shaping up to be pretty darn good...

SAT AND SAT NIGHT
W WINDS 5 TO 10 KT. WIND WAVES 1 TO 2 FT.
W SWELL 1 TO 3 FT AT 10 SECONDS. PATCHY MORNING AND LATE NIGHT FOG.

SUN THROUGH TUE
W WINDS 5 TO 15 KT...HIGHEST EACH AFTERNOON. WIND
WAVES 1 TO 3 FT. NW SWELL 2 TO 5 FT. PATCHY MORNING FOG.

Source: http://seaboard.ndbc.noaa.gov

 

[Scubaroo]

Did one dive at the Breakwater yesterday - vis was around 10-12'. Lots of sealions still there, but the ones on the diving side of the Breakwater were pretty lacklustre - just laying about on the rocks - they don't seem very alert or playful.

Saw a couple of nice ling, and a large halibut - only the second one I've seen, and again, just his butt-end swimming off. Also a small ray, which may have been a torpedo ray, I'm yet to ID him. Water was 55F. The above forecast was pretty accurate.

Oh yeah, and whoever picked up the black 2lb bullet weight I dropped on the beach, you owe me $3. It slipped off the end of my fiancees' rental weightbelt while I was carrying it to the carpark, and when I returned to pick it up, it had "disappeared-ded" from the beach :upset:

 

[Braunbehrens]

ERP once bubbled...
About the only way to get much deeper than 40ft at breakwater seems to be to bring a spade

Actually, you can just keep going, towards the end it get to about 60. A great dive is to make a left about halfway down and check out the barge. That's also in about 60. Unfortunately, the vis around here usually doesn't improve until you get below 80 or so, when it's real bad.

I remember one dive at Lobos where the vis was basically "can you see your gauge?"

Nonetheless we continued down the anchor and around 90 ft or so it opened up. At 120 the vis was great, but boy was I glad for my HID. It was much darker than a night dive, since the plankton above completely absorbed all light. With the light off you really couldn't see ANYTHING!

On night dives I sometimes kill the light. You can still see, after your eyes adjust, and it's kind of cool and eerie.

Of course I have 3 lights, so I'm not too worried that my light won't strike again when I turn it back on.

 

[Scubaroo]

Any chance of a mudmap on where to find the barge? I had GPS coordinates for it, but when I went to www.terraserver.com they put the barge in the middle of the sand literally just off the beach, rather than further out where I've been led to believe where it is.

 

[Braunbehrens]

It's really hard to find the barge unless you have a boat. Check the ba-diving archives, I think someone posted visual refs a couple years ago.

 

[ERP]

Actually, you can just keep going, towards the end it get to about 60. A great dive is to make a left about halfway down and check out the barge. That's also in about 60. Unfortunately, the vis around here usually doesn't improve until you get below 80 or so, when it's real bad.

Yeah I guess you get a bit more sunlight than Seattle, so the blooms go a bit deeper.

The odds of me finding something as small as a barge even with a good map are minimal. My navigation skills are such that I usually count myself lucky to find the bottom

 

[Scubaroo]

Ran into the anchor there again last weekend - it's pretty well buried at the moment, with only about 2' of one fluke (or whatever you call the curvy bit at the bottom) sticking out of the sand. A few months ago the entire shaft was exposed and you could see under it.

 

[Braunbehrens]

ERP once bubbled...


Yeah I guess you get a bit more sunlight than Seattle, so the blooms go a bit deeper.

The odds of me finding something as small as a barge even with a good map are minimal. My navigation skills are such that I usually count myself lucky to find the bottom

My navigation skills are superb...as long as I'm using GPS and dropping the hook when I'm right over the spot. I find it every time.

Maybe we should put a marker in the water, that would make it easier to find, like a colored rock at the bottom of the breakwater, and then you know to take a certain compass heading.

The problem with the barge is that if you blow it and ascend over it you are in the channel that many boats use to get in and out of the harbor, so it's not all that safe.

It is however, a great night dive from a boat.

 

[Scubaroo]

Braunbehrens once bubbled...
Maybe we should put a marker in the water, that would make it easier to find, like a colored rock at the bottom of the breakwater, and then you know to take a certain compass heading.

Just make sure it's nothing anyone would want to pick up.

Do you know the mini "rubble slide" along the breakwater? That might be a good UW landmark to take a bearing from. There's a patch on the breakwater that's made up entirely of football-sized and smaller rocks, like they've been dumped out of a dumptruck from on top of the breakwater. I'm guessing it's about half way along the breakwater from the beach. Once you've found it, you could even run a reel and measure the distance for us :tease:

 

[Braunbehrens]

At one point we actually had a line going to it from the breakwater, but at some point it was decided that this could be a hazard to divers and removed.

Probably the best thing would be to use a big rock that is distinctive.

It's a fair distance from the breakwater, so I don't know if you'd find it with a compass bearing....the barge isn't all that big. Still, this would be a cool project once I get back in the water. Right now it looks like I'll be dry for at least the next month.

You'll notice when I do more diving, I won't be posting nearly as much....