Santa Cruz report 5/14

:nono:

Today I went out on a friends of mine's boat and we headed out to Santa Cruz at about 6:30 this morning. The ride out was actually pretty rough and at one point, we hit a wave so hard that the window on the pilot house broke off the sliding. The first spot we hit was Chinese Harbor and while we were pulling in, we spotted multiple white sea bass from the surface but the viz was horrible and the water was cold so the sea bass moved out very quick. We dove Chinese Harbor for about an hour and didn't see a single sign of sea bass again. After moving out of there, we headed over to the side of the island and anchored in at about 35-40 feet of water. The visibility was amazing! From the boat I could easily make out the bottom of reef and I could spot small perch cruising around. We spent about 3 hours there and hunted for wsb until the bubble blowers moved in thick and there was no chance of seeing a sea bass anymore. The viz started out at about 60-70' of viz and dwindled to about 40' at the max towards the end of the dive. Santa Cruz was beautiful today and the ride home was great and smooth. Great day on the water. Also, the water at Chinese was about 52-54 degrees and at the side of the island, it was about 59-60.