The sand is back! Old Garden was rocky for a few weeks, but is now almost entirely covered with sand at low tide. Andrea, Feng, and I paddled out for a bit as Bill arrived and then dropped down into the sand. Almost immediately, I saw a skate glide away from us. We swam out a bit more and took a long stop at the first rock we saw. We were there for a solid 15 minutes snapping pictures of some zebra lebbeid shrimp, a naked hermit crab, a bunch of grubbies, comb jellies in the water column, and a couple Beroe's jellies as well. Before too long, Bill caught up to us and we continued out to the rock reef. I found dozens of Onchidoris bilamellata with their eggs, a pair of sea lemons near their eggs, and Feng found an Okenia ascidicola, which I had never seen before. Awesome dive and longest of the year so far! Our goal for this dive was to get out a little further to see if we could find some different stuff. We headed out 60 and didn't see a whole lot for awhile. As the dive went on, we started to see more - rock gunnels, a northern pipefish, a thoroughly camouflaged portly spider crab, another skate, some big flounder, and a keeper-sized lobster. At one point, Andrea grabbed my fin and pointed to some corkscrew eggs all over the rocks. It turns out those eggs were from the Okenia ascidicola, and I managed to spot one! I snapped a bunch of pictures and while I was waiting for Andrea noticed a large bright red sea raven on a rock. We made our way back to shore with the aid of some tailwind current and were a bit later than I wanted, but it was an excellent dive day.
