Finally able to get my dive buddy out for the first dive of the year! That’s what happens when you have major surgery but it’s incredible that we haven’t been able to hit the ocean this whole year. We rolled up to Pt. Lobos exactly one year since our last dive there and looked forward to testing our skills and getting some underwater time.

We did three dives over the weekend, each was a pretty standard Lobos dive – stumble carefully down the boat ramp, kick out along through the kelp channel a ways until we are near the 40ft depth mark (the end of the second sea stack) and descend down. Visibilty was around 25 – 30ft and a little murky. Closer inside of Whaler’s cove vis was closer to 10ft (or less). One thing we noticed was the lack of blacksmiths and how few rookfish were out and about. Although there were clouds of small fry here and there we both thought the number of fish was quite low – but it could have been the tide or weather, who knows. We saw a few ling cod (small ones) on the rocks and one good sized Sheephead.

By the end of each dive our fingers were getting cold from the 47F water, but our drysuits did their job and rest of us did just fine. Of course my buddy’s 12mm hood might have had something to do with it!

I was carrying my D200 and Ikelite housing and managed to get a few images. Since it was the first time for a year I didn’t expect much but I was happy to play. The two wide angle images were taken with a Nikon D200, Tokina 12-24mm lens and Ikelite housing with 8″ dome (standard port extension).

Here’s an interesting nudibranch egg ribbon that I noticed as we were cruising around.