La Jolla Shores... Why So Great?

[Grey_Wulff]

Terry,

Certainly try to hook up with some locals when diving La Jolla or use the lineups on the divebums website. Getting to the different walls is often (but not always) key to finding cool stuff. Post on board when you're coming down next.

I like that fact that the Shores always seems to turn up some interesting stuff. Here's a list of just a few of the things we've seen there:

Dolphins, Pacific Electric Ray, 4ft Halibut, gaint sheephead, batrays, hugh shoals of bait fish, diving cormorants, Giant Black Sea Bass, dead 8ft Thresher Shark, seals, the squid run, big walls, nubibranchs of all different type and sizes, the list goes on.

While conditions are not always stellar and sometimes the surge can be substaintual, if you get out often enough you get some great days.

And as a previous poster said, then there's Scripps Canyon, which is fantastic! Huge plunging walls, one of the best dives I've done.

Grey_Wulff

 

[drbill]

I only did two dives at LJS (during the May Wrinkles dive), but during those two dives I filmed 13 species I'd never filmed before in over 1,300 dives with my camera. That was quite an impressive yield for one site. I look forward to diving it again this summer!

 

[shark.byte.usa]

I had the opportunity to dive LJS in May with the Scubaboard group, definitely ranks in my top dives thus far in my short diving history. Nudi's and Crabs littering the bottom, horn sharks, sand dollar bed, a wolf eel and 40' viz in the canyon were just some of the highlights.

I hope to dive with some locals on the 4th of July weekend; I won't mind the drive down.

Garrett

 

[Mo2vation]

You gotta go with a local.

If you dive Casino Point, DrB is the guy.

If you dive Vets, Claudette is the one.

If you dive Old MarineLand, you gotta hook up with Phil.

For LJS, Terry is my guy. I drove from LAX to LJS ON A SCHOOL NIGHT (a friggen Thursday) to dive with Terry, then drove back home (hitting the rack way after 1:30 AM... OY)

It was totally worth it. Dude is motivated, knowledegable, competent and knows the place like few others. I highly recommend plying the guy with the adult beverage of his choice in copious quantities (post dive, of course) and getting him to take you on a tour of HIS shores. You'll never forget it.

---
Ken

 

[divinman]

There are probably hundreds of divers here in San Diego with more dives at the Shores than I have. I only have about 300 at this site .

If you want big pelagics and cozumel style fish....can't help ya there. But if you don't mind slowing way down, hovering over a patch a detritus or short stretch of wall and not just LOOK but really LOOK, there is tons of life out there.

This is not to say that I have NEVER had a bad or unremarkable dive here... I have had plenty. BUT they are, for me, the exception and not the rule.

Maybe I am just easily amused. I once spent 70 long minutes just drifting along the sand and yawning occasionally. Wasnt much out to see but the water was clear...
Then just as I was about to stand up in 6 ft of water, a giant sea bass swam right up to me...awesome.

Then there was the time I dropped in with Claudette and Phil only to find a juvenile wolf eel out in the middle of the sand flats....awesome

Then there was the time I was coming up from an uneventful deep dive and found an angel shark right next to a HUGE butterfly ray....awesome.

Those are the dives I remember. The rest are just therapy dives.

For those of you who refuse to beleive that the Shores is worth diving....GOOD. More parking spots for me.

 

[divinman]

Here is my photobucket album. Feel free to peruse the LJS albums and see all the stuff that we find there.

Terry


http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v109/divinman/

 

[wrinkles]

I had one of my favorite dives at the shores. It was a beautiful night and everything under the water was new and exciting to me. The fascination of diving at night plus the thrill of diving somewhere new were both fantastic. I know that the dive would not have been possible without a great buddy and a group of knowledgeable people guiding me through it. When you dive the people who you dive with are more important than the site itself. It is those people that make it a comfortable, fun, safe, dive or a boring, long or short cold one.

Ana

 

[TerryTat]

I havent checked out my post for quite some time and am delighted to see so much info to chew on. i'm definitely going to pursue the shores more. What is the average depth of diving there? I'm getting the feeling it's quite deep. Are you all diving on air.. or gas?
My dive buddy and I are going diving on the the third of July.. Perhaps we can hit the shores.
Thanks again for all your input!
Terry

 

[divinman]

I ran my dive log, on computer, through the usual filters and it looks like my average depth for dives at the shores is around 60ft. I have done deeper dives there to be sure but by and large the wall starts about there. No need to go deeper if you don't want to or arent comfortable.

SAND DIVES:

On yeah, you can, like open water students, spend the entire dive at 20ft and see not much more than sand....but you can also see at times huge shoals of baitfish, cormorants hunting fish, sea bass, large halibut. Or, you may just see the random crab and snail. The canyon, even just the edge, is where this dive site really starts for me.

Terry

 

[Skull]

Dove the north wall this am...unfortunitely I missed the drop by about 100 yrds and burned too much gas to make a quality turn, dove a single 72 with only 2500psi ...oh well. Still got a wonderful pass at it with 60' vis @55-75'. Never ceases to amaze me how wonderful that dive is. Terry is right most of the quality dives @ the shores are around 60'.

Last time I dove LJS I spent a good minute swimming through a school of mackrels...very impressive....just east of the canyon around Valicitos Point ...it was right at the start of the YT Bite ...was hoping to see a few YT come up out of the canyon .