Quick hot report from South Monastery

[Farty]

Really quick report from stinky hotel room (I am sorry for typos)....

Just got back from night dive with Scubabumps from south monastery. The ocean was very calm, visibility - well harder to guess but I would say 30-40ft. It was very nice dive, I have never seen so many fish before! Well I did, it was called National Geographics.

 

[Bogie]

30-40 ft. vis what a great dive!

 

[mobeeno]

30-40 ft. vis what a great dive!

And it was a night dive. I want to do that there one night.

 

[Ouvea]

Talk about a change of conditions in a short time. Just came back from there. Had strong surge with poor visibility, probably didn't get better than 10-15 feet. Spent the better part of the dive just staring at a small fearless halibut.

Completely botched the exit and couldn't get my fin off to walk out. Turned back and tried it again. Botched it once more. Said to hell with the upright exit and just crawled out. I haven't crawled out of Monastery in years.

If you panic in the surf area when things don't go accordinly, you can be in serious trouble! The water movement is strong enough to take the reg out your mouth.

Claude

 

[ScubaBumps]

Farty and I had a very memorable dive Friday night at South Monastery. I had one of those National Geographic moments. Farty was 20-30 feet ahead of me with two lights shining out into the water column, creating a sphere of light with him in the middle and many hundreds of fish surrounding him. Except for those whirling dense clouds of sardines (I think) over at Del Monte, I have not seen so many fish as at South Monastery Friday night.

Farty was navigator Friday night. We popped to the surface half way between the two shore lights we had set. It was pretty good shooting after a long loop through the rocks.

 

[zf2nt]

Talk about a change of conditions in a short time. Just came back from there. Had strong surge with poor visibility, probably didn't get better than 10-15 feet. Spent the better part of the dive just staring at a small fearless halibut.

Claude

Hmmm...I was there yesterday from 1328 to 1439, which should have been the same time you were there. The only other diver I saw was Brian Hackett, who had just paddled back from a kayak dive at The Needle (!) (a.k.a. "Half Dome" for Beach Hopper divers). Anyway, we had at least 50'-60' of visibility once we got down below 60' or so. It was absolutely gorgeous. The same held true at N. Monastery, which is where we did our first dive. Once we went down into the trench and sank below 80' or so I could see clearly all of the Metridium clusters on the ledges below us.

I did have an "interesting" experience on the N. Monastery dive. I took my buddy along the 60' contour to skirt the wash rock and get him over to the head of Carmel Canyon, then plunged down right at the head. He had all new CHEAP gear which he had never used before. As we passed through 85' on the sharply sloping rock wall that is the head of the canyon, the Q/R buckle holding one of his weight pouches in the BC came loose and the weight pouch fell out. Fortunately, he caught it as it came out, but then the Q/R buckle wasn't strong enough to hold the 10# pouch in. I didn't know it until we got out, but he had to hold the weight pouch in with his hands for the whole dive.

Bruce