northcoast_diver
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I made the long 3 hour (each way) drive to Monterey this past weekend to take a student on a final check-out dive. He had developed a scheduling conflict due to business travel with his job, so he had missed the final class dive. I picked him up along the way and we carpooled to the dive site.
We went to Lovers' Cove in Pacific Grove, a nice protected cove perfect for swimmers and beginning scuba divers as well. The beach was teeming with bikinis and with kids, and a large group of triathletes was practicing their surface swimming as well apparently for an upcoming local sports event.
Winds were fairly calm when we arrived, but the seas were moderately rough, with the waters in the cove being fairly protected, but the swell outside the cove was bringing small surf-able breaking waves every few minutes, where a few novice surfers were practicing riding the waves. That is always a bad sign, for scuba.
We snorkeled out on the surface to the edge of the kelp, about 300 yards, where we hoped the best vis would be. Once there, we dropped down, following a kelp frond to keep from getting separated in the poor vis, down to the bottom of the frond at 30 ft. depth.
That indeed was where the best vis was, however it was only about 5 ft. The combination of the plankton and algae both in full bloom now, together with a fine silt from the surge at 30 ft depth, did not make for a very fun dive. Vis was even less, at 3 ft, closer into shore, where the depths were shallower.
There were other divers there as well, and they were not happy either.
I spent the greater portion of the dive watching my student, as he navigated the course straight back on a 240 degree heading on his compass. Other than a few fish, there was not much to see. The surge must have been chasing the local nudibranchs into their nooks and out of view. A few sea stars here and there dotted the sand channels between the small reefs.
The best part of the day for me was the sand dabs with lemon and garlic sauce back at the Chowder House restaurant on Lighthouse Ave in Monterey. As we filled out logbooks and signed his new C-card, he remarked that he thought it was a great dive, and exciting for him to see a new dive site, and to get a chance to really put his compass to good use underwater.
He also remarked that today's poor vis had taught him to appreciate the 30 ft vis we had experienced out at the end of the Breakwater at San Carlos Beach in Monterey during our last check-out dives, where the undersea life is splendid, with every kind of sea star, nudibranch, sea cucumber, and anemomie that you could imagine, together with schools of fish at every turn. But not for us, here, today, however.
The plankton and algae should clear up in the next month or so, here on the coast of Northern California. The seas are normally calmer right now, but this past weekend however, they were not. When hurricanes blow south, across the tropics of Mexico, or when early storms track north, into Alaska and Canada, their energy sometimes reaches us, here.
The best diving here, in Northern California, in terms of water clarity, is normally from late September to early June, as this past weekend demonstrated, in contrast. The summer months of July and August are good times to try diving at Lake Tahoe or one of the other mountain lakes, where plankton is not an issue and algae is often nonexistent as well.
We went to Lovers' Cove in Pacific Grove, a nice protected cove perfect for swimmers and beginning scuba divers as well. The beach was teeming with bikinis and with kids, and a large group of triathletes was practicing their surface swimming as well apparently for an upcoming local sports event.
Winds were fairly calm when we arrived, but the seas were moderately rough, with the waters in the cove being fairly protected, but the swell outside the cove was bringing small surf-able breaking waves every few minutes, where a few novice surfers were practicing riding the waves. That is always a bad sign, for scuba.
We snorkeled out on the surface to the edge of the kelp, about 300 yards, where we hoped the best vis would be. Once there, we dropped down, following a kelp frond to keep from getting separated in the poor vis, down to the bottom of the frond at 30 ft. depth.
That indeed was where the best vis was, however it was only about 5 ft. The combination of the plankton and algae both in full bloom now, together with a fine silt from the surge at 30 ft depth, did not make for a very fun dive. Vis was even less, at 3 ft, closer into shore, where the depths were shallower.
There were other divers there as well, and they were not happy either.
I spent the greater portion of the dive watching my student, as he navigated the course straight back on a 240 degree heading on his compass. Other than a few fish, there was not much to see. The surge must have been chasing the local nudibranchs into their nooks and out of view. A few sea stars here and there dotted the sand channels between the small reefs.
The best part of the day for me was the sand dabs with lemon and garlic sauce back at the Chowder House restaurant on Lighthouse Ave in Monterey. As we filled out logbooks and signed his new C-card, he remarked that he thought it was a great dive, and exciting for him to see a new dive site, and to get a chance to really put his compass to good use underwater.
He also remarked that today's poor vis had taught him to appreciate the 30 ft vis we had experienced out at the end of the Breakwater at San Carlos Beach in Monterey during our last check-out dives, where the undersea life is splendid, with every kind of sea star, nudibranch, sea cucumber, and anemomie that you could imagine, together with schools of fish at every turn. But not for us, here, today, however.
The plankton and algae should clear up in the next month or so, here on the coast of Northern California. The seas are normally calmer right now, but this past weekend however, they were not. When hurricanes blow south, across the tropics of Mexico, or when early storms track north, into Alaska and Canada, their energy sometimes reaches us, here.
The best diving here, in Northern California, in terms of water clarity, is normally from late September to early June, as this past weekend demonstrated, in contrast. The summer months of July and August are good times to try diving at Lake Tahoe or one of the other mountain lakes, where plankton is not an issue and algae is often nonexistent as well.
