Diving Monterey, California

by Toby Mottram

The last weekend of October I had a spare Sunday in California before starting a busy week of meetings in the USA. Instead of stooging around San Francisco I drove down to Monterey, about 2 hours drive South down Highway 101. I’d booked a boat trip and equipment hire with a shop from the internet.

Monterey Bay is a broad indentation in the Pacific coast where cold currents running down from Alaska meet warmer waters. This causes an immense variety of fish life that has been heavily exploited with fish canneries being once dotted along its shores. The canneries have since closed but the fame given to it by Steinbeck’s novel, the local marine life and the historic mud-brick former state capital hut have created a themed holiday resort where diving is a popular activity.

I arrived on the Saturday evening. At the expense of my company I ate in a good restaurant overlooking the bay, spinach and bacon salad starter with a delicious dressing followed by Hawaiian Ono with macadamia nut and coconut sauce with pilaf rice. The Sunday morning I woke up to find the dive shop just across the road from my motel close to Cannery Row. There were several dive shops and schools listed in the local phone book. Boats leave at 7,8 and 9 am every morning for a four hour 2 dive trip and take as many divers as can get aboard. Air can be refilled on board. Unfortunately the boat I had booked on, “Monterey Express” had been dry-docked due to an engine fault so instead of two dives I had to settle for a shore dive in Breakwater Bay. I found a buddy thanks to the shop and sorted out kit.

My biggest difficulty was working out weighting in pounds, especially as the cylinder I hired was aluminium and the weight belt integrated in the Scubapro BC. Similarly, pressures are quoted in psi and volume in pints! However, every thing checked out correctly and I drove down to the shore side car park. The scene was like Stoney Cove on a Saturday with dozens of vehicles and seemingly hundreds of divers kitting up or sitting around. The main difference was that the sun shone warmly from a cloudless sky and the water was the blue Pacific ocean.

Breakwater Cove is used as an open water training area by the local club, PADI and NAUI outfits. Entry was across a sandy beach about 50m wide. Despite the calm there was a surge of surf at about 1 m which knocked a few people over. Beyond the surf it was easy to stand up to put on fins and complete checks in waist deep water. The dive plan was to fin out along the breakwater that heads North into the bay. I’d been a little worried by tales of becoming lost or entangled in the kelp forest and visibility can be poor. However, it turned out to be one of the easiest and most pleasant dives I’ve done.
The water temperature was 13°C and it began to feel cold, even in my 10 mm semi-dry, whenever I stopped for any length of time to look at the amazing variety of marine life. I finned clear of the groups of divers doing their basic training and dropped down to 10-11 m and followed the contour. As I got clear of the beach the visibility improved to about 8 m. With the sun shining there was plenty of light and I had no need of a torch. There was plenty of life in the sand and the seabed was carpeted with enormous starfish that hung off the rocks and crawled around. I didn’t see many fish at first but various wrasse and Pollock lurked close to the rocks. Every few metres rope-like trees of kelp with leaves every metre, grew up to the surface. The main forest lies about 50 m west from the breakwater, we finned along a patch of open water between the breakwater and the forest.

As I finned along looking at the fish they suddenly disappeared and a brown shape shot past me. A sea lion from the colony of about 100 that lives on the end of the breakwater was checking me over. A couple of her mates appeared, young animals about a metre long finning along and then twisting back to look at me. I felt a little scared by the speed and agility especially when they approached straight at me at speed teeth bared, swerving away at the last minute. The knowledge that there were much bigger, angrier ones hanging about on the surface made me relieved to turn back as I started feeling cold with more than half a tank still remaining. As I turned back a cormorant swept past me looking for fry. Further back the fish started reappearing but I began to find it easy to spot the sea lions that were lurking around in the rocks by the movement of the water and bubbles.

After wading ashore I was able to rinse the salt off the kit by standing under the showers thoughtfully provided by the local authorities. The shop charged me $7.50 for the air and the kit hire, all in all a value for money dive.

The Monterey peninsular is a National Marine Park and there is lots to see such as sea otters and orcas quite apart from the grey whale migration later in the winter. The weather for diving is best in the autumn as the weather is sunny and calm. The summer tends to be foggy and this causes sudden onshore winds to appear. Return flights to San Francisco are only £250 in November and various types of low cost accommodation are available.

The natives are friendly, if a little large and the diving is good.

Cambridge Sub Aqua Club

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