It's not the best time of the year for San Diego diving. I dive La Jolla Shores a lot. On Wednesday night, surf was virtually non-existent and we had about 20 ft vis in the canyon, which is certainly good enough for night diving. Lots of critters out: black dorids, noble dorid, Stearns' aeolids, lion nudibranchs, sarcastic fringehead, painted greenlings, rockpool blennies, crabs (several species), brittle stars, octopus, lobsters, etc. Mostly macro stuff...but I like the macro stuff.
Be forewarned. As a newer diver, you're probably going to miss a lot of the macro stuff unless someone is there to point it out to you...and even then you might miss it. You'll probably do the dive and complain about only seeing dirt, sand dollars, and a bunch of crabs. You have to really look for the stuff because often times it's camouflaged.
La Jolla Shores is a
very easy shore dive. The gently sloping sand to the canyon wall is ideal for dive training. Just ask some locals ahead of time how far out you need to kick to locate the Main Wall directly west of Vallecitos Street. The Divebums.com website has very good topside line-ups to help you triangulate the drop-in points.
It's probably best to try to tag-along with locals. They could show you Vallecitos Point (60 fsw depth) and then you could head back to shore on a 110-120° heading. If you have a few days lead time, you can send an email to the Divebums.com email list to see whether anyone would care to give you a tour of the canyon. As long as you make it clear what your experience level is and that you aren't familiar with the area, I bet that someone would be willing to meet up with you and your buddy. I'd offer, but I won't have the time to dive this weekend.
According to the surf forecast, there should be better conditions on Saturday morning (tomorrow) than on Sunday morning. Sunday surf predictions look pretty high. Recently, however, the surf forecasts haven't been very accurate.
Hope this helps...
