I haven't been here in years so I came for a dive on March 14, 2010. I didn't tie my boat to the mooring buoy, but tied up to the nearest shoreline and swam out to the buoy on the surface. When I descended, I had a nice surprise. Visibility was about 100 feet. I swam from the bottom of the mooring rope over the reef and saw the ledge of cloud sponges far below me. When I reached the ledge, I instinctively checked my depth gauge since it was so bright and clear, I felt like I should be much shallower (the ledge is still 110-120 feet deep). It was a cloudy day on the surface. If it was sunny, it would have been dangerous, since I might have descended to 200 feet thinking I was still in the intertidal zone. Anyway, I did the usual tour of the ledge and had a look down around the walls below. I could see more cloud sponges than I remembered from years ago down there. I dropped a bit over the edge and could easily see ripples on the surface of the water from 130 feet deep. I tried to take some self-portraits to give a sense of scale and show off the visibility, but the depth and the limited time forced me to mostly shoot off random shots before I had to go back to the shallows. I noticed a few numbered markers attached to small floats around the sponges. I assume these are for some research project. I also noticed several new-looking bits of broken sponges scattered around. Hopefully this wasn't caused by divers, but I'm assuming it was. If you're a visiting diver who's never been in cold water before and are wearing an unfamiliar rental drysuit and a dive charter takes you out here in the Spring when visibility is 10 feet, please be careful.
