The Divers
David (Captain)
Cynthia
Merlin
Dani

The Plan
Cynthia, Merlin, Dani, and I were going to make a nice afternoon recreational dive at Point Lobos. Lunch was at Gianni's. We geared up and planned to kick out for a total dive time of 60 minutes as Merlin and Dani were both on single tanks. The plan was for a maximum depth of 60 feet and to stay within minimum deco limits along Middle Reef.

The Dive
We kicked out a long way on the surface, to the point where we could look into Coal Chute Cove from the sand channel. After a quick chance to catch our breath (man, scooters spoil us), we dropped in 50' of water and perfectly in the sand channel. As we were getting sorted on the bottom, I looked up and saw the smallest nudibranch I have ever seen! Floating in the water was a Hermissenda crassicornis that measured 2cm at the most! I caught it on my glove and showed everyone else my fantastic little find. After I put it down, we cut north to reach Middle Reef proper. As luck would have it, we would up right at the warbonnet's hole. So, I did the standard locating trick with the palm kelp, found his little hole (it is only the size of a quarter) and showed Merlin and Dani. Neither of them had ever seen a warbonnet before. We continued along Middle Reef for the remainder of the dive, making our way progressively shallower. Along the way, I found a large cabezon, a male California sheephead, and a smattering of nudi's. We cruised on in until we hit sand in about 20' of water and made our ascent.

The Deco
The deco was simple. Just a few minutes at 15' since we had stayed so shallow the whole dive. A short surface swim back in and we were ready to get out of our gear. All in all, a fantastic dive that I quite enjoyed! Hopefully I got some good video clips to use as "stock" footage in one of my current video projects. I think I'm eventually going to burn all my video to DVD for people who would like copies.