Report posted to SFBay_DIR by Kevin August 12, 2001:
Wow! The vis was unbelievable! I could see all the way to my fins!I drove down with William G. who it turns out only lives about a mile from my house in Pleasant Hill. When we got to Monastary it was flat as can be, but on the swim out, the vis looked pretty bad. When we dropped down at the wash rock, we we dropped into total darkness. I found the bottom first, pretty much by running into it. Since I had never been down to look at the actual "drop off", our plan was to swim down to about 100' and take a fairly quick look before moving shallower. We bottomed out at 105' and it was pitch black. Everybody always describes this kind of vis as "like a night dive". I think that it is worse because at least on a night dive your light will shine out more than about 5-8 feet! It's kind of like driving in a snow storm with your bright lights on. We ascended and spent most of the dive at around 30' or so working our way back in, checking out all the little stuff on the rocks. So now, I've been to the drop off and still haven't seen it.
After filling our tanks we decided to call it a day and got tri tip sandwiches at the breakwater. The visibility actually looked pretty decent at the breakwater, but we had already decided to bail.
105' for 38 minutes and 4 hours of driving... :)
Kevin Metcalfe