Hello Randy,
Welcome to SCUBABOARD.
California is an International dive destination offering year round diving. I have dove with people from Germany who came to SoCal to dive our kelp forest. Diving in giant kelp is evidently an experience unique to SoCal. So yes there are lots of places to dive, Malibu, Redondo Beach, Palos Verde, and Laguna Beach, and San Diego. We have lots of kelp and rock reef structure to attract the fish most divers go to see.
To get certified will cost you about $145, plus books $40, plus equipment rental $45, plus boat trip $100, plus mask, fins, snorkel, boots and gloves. Aw, call it $350-$450 depending upon where you go. LA County runs the oldest certification course in the nation and a very good one, taking many weeks to complete and costing $400.
Now for the soap box. The following is strictly my opinion.
Hunting in the water is, like hunting on the land, a subject that will generate convesation. I am sure you are aware that many SCUBA divers got into the sport to see the beauty under the sea, including all the fish:07: and there are not that many fish any more. You do not see pole spears and spear guns too often at the beach in the hands of SCUBA divers. Most hunters tend to free dive becsuse of the noisy bubbles. But lobster hunting, that is popular in the SCUBA crowd.
The dive community does appear to agree on one the following:
1: know what you are shooting at (species and that is leagal size) before you shoot it. Divers hate to hear a hunter surface and ask "are these good to eat?" (which has happened on many dive boats)
2: Do not shoot your spear gun in visibility less than the maximum range of the spear gun. We divers tend to not like holes in our wet suits, or us :11: There may be other divers in the water you are not aware of. Murphy's law dictates that if you spear can travel 20 feet and the visilbity is 10 feet (fairly common these days) that another diver will be admiring the fish you shot at and missed on a driect line on the other side of the fish, just 15 feet from you. A large ocean can be a small place sometimes.
3. Eat what you take.
4: Observe the preserves found along our coast as no hunting zones.
5: Do not shoot a fish another diver is using as a photography subject until after they swim away. It is A: dangerours and B: Bad form old boy (as Captain hook would say).
6. Strictly observe the DFG rules (which are very complex IMHO). The dive community is currently launching yet another letter writing campaign urging maximum sentencing for poachers who killed a Giant Back Sea Bass (endangered species and protected) inside the preserve (no hunting area) in LaJolla. The last letter writing campaign netted the offender in that case $20,000 in fines, loss of hunting and fishing privileges for life and free room and board as a guest of the state for 2 years.
