The next site we dove in Monterey Bay was a kelp forest off to the left of the beach. We walked from the park and down the steps to the beach. From there it was a short surface swim out to the edge of the forest where we made our descent. What you can see in the water in the picture below are the tops of the kelp stalks.

Monterey Bay

One of the first things we happened upon was an orgy of sea hares. There must have been 6 or 7 of them all clustered together in one big red ball. The pictures do not do it justice. There were so many that it was hard to pick one out from another, especially when they all blend into the background red seaweed.

Sea Hares

It's also very difficult to capture the alienness of moving amongst the kelp forest. It can surround you very quickly and it can block out much of the light coming from the surface. It wasn't even the high growth portion of the season.

Kelp Forest

Towards the end of the dive things got a little livelier.

School of Fish

Then we chanced upon a couple of octopus. They were relatively docile but still attempted several shape and colour changes to confuse us.

Octopus

When we surfaced at the end of the dive, there was a sea lion poking his head out of the water about 20 meters away from us. Apparently he had been curiously following us for the last quarter of the dive. The sea lion dove back under and popped his head up a couple of more times but never really got any closer to us. Ah well...hopefully next time!

Location: Monterey, CA, USA

Dive Number:   96 Bottom Time: 1h 5m Time In: 11:56 a.m. Tank In: Max Depth: 27.00 ft Table Used:

Mix:   Air Safety Stop: 3m Time Out: 1:01 p.m. Tank Out: Average Depth: 16.00 ft Start Pressure Group:

Surface Interval:   1h 0m End Pressure Group:

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