Longest Dives Ever

We did three dives yesterday, each over an hour long. We finished our underwater navigator course and did a night dive for fun. It was so awesomely calm out this weekend! No waves. No surf. No surge. When we finished our night dive, the water was like glass - so calm and peaceful.

Notably on yesterday's dives, we saw a HUGE number of animals. Including 2 electric rays - buried in the sand, we could just make out their outline. And a lot of octopi on our night dive. They are so cool - they started out spread on the bottom blending in with the sand. When you shine a light on them, they turn orange, and then start moving - looking for a place to hide. They find a hole they can fit in and start squeezing their arms in... then their head... and finally the very last tentacle. Bloop! Gone. We saw three that were about 8-12 inches across, and several more that were only about 4 inches across. Cute little guys. :)

Since we were doing a class and were practicing using our compass, we didn't bring the camera. A shame given how calm the water was and how many animals we saw! Could have had some really nice pictures.

Here's our rough list of many of the cool animals we saw yesterday:

• Nudibranchs: lots of Hermissendas, *one tiny orange one, *one white one with black markings
  
• Jellyfish: Two different kinds. They were everywhere. It was just like the jellyfish fields on spongebob squarepants. Some were as small as a pea. The largest were about 4-6 inches long. So thick we couldn't avoid running into them.
  
• Crabs: Lots of little red kelp crabs holding onto the green blades of seaweed. Hundreds and hundreds of hermit crabs all congregated together at the same spot. Big crabs and little crabs of all assorted varieties.
  
• Shrimp: Little clear stripy shrimp just an inch long. Skeleton shrimp!! Out of the blue there was one holding onto my glove. Another was drifting by and I put my glove next to him so he could grab on. They gave us a little dancing show. :) Some kind of big long shrimp on the night dive that we'd never seen before.
  
• Starfish: Well - they are never in short supply. But on one of our dives we came upon an enormous sunflower star. He was cruisng along pretty fast and in front of him all the sand dabs and small crabs were coming out of the 'woodwork' and fleeing for their lives. It was just like watching a cheesy horror movie - seeing this big hairy starfish slowly terrorizing the poor fish in the village. We also learned about brittle stars. They bury themselves in the sand and just leave one leg sticking up to grab food. Once we realized what they were, we saw them everywhere - waving that leg in the water.
  
• Urchins!: We hadn't seen any live urchins before, but we saw several small ones. We also saw a sand dollar scooting himself along through the sand.
  
• Fish: Not too many large fish on these dives overall, but we saw lots of rockfish by the rock wall at breakwater. Few other large fish here and there. The bottom at Del Monte was covered with little inch long sand dabs. If you hovered in one place you'd see them lift up off the bottom, swim to a new spot, then settle down and blend back in with the bottom. We saw some larger ones (4-5 inches) on our night dive plus one that was totally different from the others.
  
• Rays: We found two electric rays buried in the sand. We fanned the sand and dusted them off, but they stayed put - just ruffled the edges of their wings at us.
  
• Snails: Lots and lots and lots of cone snails and quite a few moon snails and a few whelks. Plus the normal olives and top snails.
  
• Octopi: Several large, several small. Plus a few stubby squids. We startled them and they inked and swam away.