This was our first time doing a boat dive (except for a night dive in August), and we were blown away by both sites. The PTP site was absolutely amazing. It was an enormous pinnacle the shape of a molar tooth, and due to its size, we only saw about 15% to 20% of it. It was covered in some type of sea plant that resembled small, seaweed like palm trees about 3' tall. Beneath the plant life was the usual anenomes and critters you're use to seeing in other places. There was an extra perk in that large fish (1' to 3') were hiding in the plant life.
The pinnacle started out at about 45', and went down to 130'. We did a 30 minute dive with 5 minutes of deco with an average depth of 80'. There were large cracks in the pinnacle that made great sand channels to swim through.
Unfortunately it was a bit darker due to the depth, and the built in flash on my camera caused quite a bit of back scatter.
Ballbuster is a smaller pinnacle that starts at 65' to 70', and goes down to a little over 100'. This place was where most of the photos were taken, and there was so much life here that we found ourselves hovering over a 15' section of rock for most of our dive. It wasn't until the end of the dive (about 28 minutes) until we saw the wolf eel. We followed a similar ascent profile, but added an extra minute of deco between 20' and 10'.
My wife was buzzed by a sea lion, and others on the dive saw a 2' x 4' bat ray.
On a side note, you might be interested in the photos we took of the
Metridium Fields on 9-26-04. That dive can be murder on single tanks when you're following the pipe out. It always amazes me how far you have to swim to get there. We are usually really close to our turn around pressure by the time we get there, and often change our dive profile to include longer bottom time and a longer surface swim back.
~ Jason
