Announcing a new Meetup for The Greater Bay Area Scuba Lovers Meetup!

What: San Carlos Beach - Intermediate-level Seasonal Re-Entry

When: Sunday, March 21,[masked]:00 AM

Where:
San Carlos Beach
Cannery Row x Foam St (Left of Breakwater)
Monterey, CA 93940

Which intermediate divers are ready to celebrate the approaching Equinox and end of Winter? Nothing crazy, nothing pagan: San Caros Beach. Park in the lot above Breakwater but look for us at the lower end of the grass with the Meetup sign. We will be closer to the water than previously, noticing the waves of the day, and aligning ourselves with their rhythms in preparation for our entry and exit.

That is if there are any waves...Wind Guru suggests under 2-feet waves off Lover's Point which can translate to a couple inches by the time that little energy gets further in to San Carlos Beach. This is the name of the beach we use to dive Breakwater. We are going to enter the water far to the left facing the water, near to the structures; the cannery pipes come out from one of them at 30 degrees from magnetic north.

Short surface swim suited to winter thickness in our mid-drift and we descend into perhaps 14 feet of water. Down there we will find two smaller pipes which we will follow to deeper water. At the end we will swim north maybe a couple times beyond visibility distance, find the wider pipe, check our air, follow the pipe to 40-feet or so deeep water, turn around at the end, and follow it all the way back in. The entire length of that larger pipe is habitat along which we have always encountered creatures, especially fish swimming from one side to the other.

This looks like octopus habitat to the experienced. Lots of crevices along the cannery pipes are the kind of place an octopus crawls into for the daytime and feels secure. Bring yourself a 'day light' (smaller underwater flashlight one brings along on day dives to peek into creature hidey-holes to see what might be in there) if you got one.

We are sizing up this dive for its potential as a night dive later in the season. Octopus territory is where one is most likely to find them out hunting at night. We will be scheduling dusk and night dives here to see if we get lucky with the creature encounters we cherish. An experienced intermediate diver might want to do familiarizaion day dives here if they think they would like to do a night dive here later.

We have no dive professional leading this dive. We have a dive plan framework outlined above. We will buddy up and buddy pairs will dive together. We generally try to keep a note of location of bubbles of other divers in our group as different things catch our interest and we cycle between kicking and observing.

Learn more here:
http://www.meetup.com/scubadivers/calendar/12898792/