It's about diving. And cats.
We haven't been to Cordell Bank since 2016, and it wasn't for lack of trying. Every year except 2020, we had a weather window set up for the project, but we never managed to have a long enough period of good weather to get the boat up to Bodega Bay, dive, and get the boat back to Monterey. So this year, we did things a bit differently. Instead of looking for a period of 4-ish days of consecutive good weather, we had a weather window on the longer side (4 weeks), and we moved the boat on the first day tha
This year, we were toting some extra gear on the dive. The Office of Marine Sanctuaries has been doing this project where they create 360 degree VR videos of marine sanctuaries, so they wanted us to gather footage using their camera ("the Boxfish"). The camera is a beast, and is somewhat complex to use. Nick, the NOAA keeper of the camera, came out to Monterey for a few days in August to show us how to use it.