Even though I had completed my Reef Check training a while back, finishing Fundies, the Kona trip and other diving kept me from actually doing any surveys for them up till now. In addition to being my first survey trip of the year, what made it extra special was that it was in the no-diving area of Point Lobos, off the Escapade. Suffice to say, I was thrilled to bits at the prospect of diving a part of the reserve that very few had seen :)
We got to Weston pretty quickly and Team Medusa dropped in on transect 4. There was a lot of rocky relief at the site and was very different from anything I'd seen on my other Lobos dives. I didn't have much to record for my invertebrate and algae transects but there were tons of fish around. The good thing was that there were very few urchins about and another team also reported seeing some sunflower stars. Very encouraging observations overall.
-> 40min, 69ft, 54F
The second survey dive was inside the cove, familiar territory for me. I managed to not make a total fool of myself navigating to our transect to the west. Considering we were fairly shallow, it was super surgy and the viz was pretty bad. We did a couple of extra fish transects before my buddy called it on account of being super jetlagged.
-> 60min, 34ft, 57F
I learned a lot on my first survey dives - what worked and what didn't. I'm totally looking forward to more of these before the season ends.
- U