Went back to the Breakwater for an afternoon dive yesterday. It was a gorgeous day in Monterey as the weather has been staying in the mid-70s and even higher lately. The visibility was fantastic for the area, around 20 feet. We swam on the surface before going down around 12' at depth. Once at the bottom we swam over the bed of sand dollars and headed out along the rocks on the pier wall.
The first fish of significance I came across was a lingcod and I noticed it had a hook in its mouth. The hook still had line and sinker attached to it (see pic below). I called my dive buddy over to take a look and once he was beside me and saw the problem I went ahead and grabbed the end of the fishing line. I had no idea if I was going to be able to hold on or not or if this was even a good idea but I needed to at least try to get the hook out. Once I had control of the line the fish went nutz and started swimming in circles while I tried to grab it with my free hand. I got control of the fish, held it with one hand and used my other hand to take the hook out. The fish swam away with no hook and hopefully it's smile will be back to normal soon!!!
Immediately following fish hook fun time I felt something cruise past me from above and then heard a "thud" in the sand. I looked over and there was a red, bead dive weight that had fallen out of my buddy's belt. I grabbed the weight and brought it up to him as he was floating at the surface. Come to realize he actually dropped TWO of his weights to the bottom and both of them almost landed on my head!!!
We got him situated with his weights and continued on. There were the usual seastars, another sunstar that could also be the biggest I've ever seen, crabs, nudibranchs, a number of jellies and then something I've never seen diving...snorkeling, yes in Florida but never diving and never in California. I swam over a rock pile when I saw the rock move. And then it changed color...several colors in fact. It was an octopus!!! How fitting that as I'm starting to get more involved with cephalopod research that I finally see an octopus (I believe a two-spot but need to check some more pics to make sure it wasn't a red.) But wait, out of nowhere comes yet another octopus!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you kidding me?! I'm guessing male and female and I interrupted their flirt session. Whatever they were doing it was friggin' cool as heck and I'm not going to lie, I may have done an underwater happy dance.
Overall it was an unexpectedly great dive and I'm glad I went as I hadn't been in the water (for fun) in a while. LIG!!!
Location: Breakwater
Time: 45 mins
Depth: 35'
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