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If you’ll pardon a rambling lurker (and diver)…
I’m guessing whatever the problem is it’s much more complicated than we think. While my experience with La Jolla is limited to the last three or four years, my long experience with the beds to the north, which are behaving similarly, seems to say the symptoms don’t match up with any one theory.
The beds I know well – stretching from Salt Creek down to the Barn made it through the last El Nino really well, which shouldn’t have happened. It’s only been since the water cooled back down that they faded. What’s with that?
I’ve been to the bottom at Sano and San Mateo repeatedly the last couple of years, where there hasn’t been a trace of kelp, and in both instances there were no purple urchins and very few reds.
The Barn came roaring back during the last two Fall/Winters only to die off before the water got warm. This year I’ve been diving the Barn since early February and it went from pretty awesome to sickly stems in a matter of weeks.
At the same time, the new Artificial Reef off Poche and one between San Mateo and Trestles came up out of nowhere over the winter, although they were down in the current when I was last there, so I don’t know how they’re doing.
The bottom line is it just sucks, and I’m hoping it comes back before I get too old to take advantage.
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