Steph and I joined Lexi for a nice Saturday morning dive.  We went to Del Monte beach, and dove along the pier.  I’d never done a pier dive before, although we had tried to plan a night dive along the Santa Cruz pier.

Shortly after we got there a group of people up on the pier started playing with remote control surfers.  They were adorable, and seemed to work really well.

Steph’s new cave diving buddy, Madz, joined us a little late, but we waited on him to get ready before getting in the water.  It was decently clear once we got past the breakwater zone.  We were able to wade out along the concrete portion of the pier before putting fins on and descending.  I was the only one diving wet and the only one diving back mount.  The other three were diving dry suits with side mount.  This was largely training for the Mexico diving and getting more used to that gear, but also just for comfort on the thermals.  I was getting pretty cold, but I kept myself warm by going through more air than I normally would.  We had only planned for a dive at 25 ft for one hour, and my take was a 120 nitrox, which could keep me down at 25 feet for nearly three hours.

We got to see a lot of pretty nudibranchs, lots of hermit crabs, some gigantic snails with tiny shells, several of the largest sea stars I’ve ever seen, some well camouflaged decorator crabs, a few jelly fish, strawberry anemones, and skeleton shrimp.