The plankton bloom off Palos Verdes this morning was the thickest, darkest, and greenest I have seen in a few years. I dropped down on Golf Ball Reef just after dawn this morning. The anchor chain was barely visible more than five feet below me as I descended. As I reached a depth of sixty feet, about five feet off the bottom, the visibility cleared up to a decent fifteen feet. It was night dive conditions.
There is new kelp on the reef, but most of the usual residents were missing. During a 70+ minute dive, I found about a dozen nudibranchs. I usually see a hundred or more here. Small scorpionfish were scattered about with a single cabezon near my anchor.
The octopus was still in the toilet near the middle of the reef. A lobster with one broken antenna was hiding after its escape from a diver during opening week. The surface temperature was 70° with 57° on the reef.