Welcome to the PNW, Julie! The good news is that, once you get exposure protection sorted out, Puget Sound is a fantastic place to be a diver. The protected nature of the water means we have VERY few days of being weathered out, and the cold water nurtures an amazing variety of life.
To answer your specific questions:
Okay, Washington divers where is the place to dive? From Everett, I think your closest shore dives are the two at Mukilteo (probably a half hour or so driving time?) There is a group that shore dives every Monday night there, which would be a good group to hook up with. You can find the "MMM" (Monday Mukilteo Madness) dives on
Northwest Dive Club • Index page. For boat diving, the Aluminator charter sometimes goes out of Everett, I think; there are some nice boat dives not far from the Everett marina. And if you drive up to Anacortes (about an hour) there are charters going out of there into the San Juans every weekend.
Who to dive with? Finding dive buddies here shouldn't be a problem. The site I mentioned above is a great one for finding buddies.
The Emerald Sea Dive Club is based in Edmonds, and the Kelp Krawlers, I think, are in Everett (although their website is currently down, so I can't check). In addition, most of our dive shops run shop dives from time to time, and I would imagine the Everett Underwater Sports and Evergreen shops are no exception. And there is always posting here on SB! There are a lot of Seattle-area divers here.
Dive shops? You've already had some listed. I don't know the Everett US or Evergreen at all (although I've heard good things about the latter, which is a fairly new shop). I use NW Sports Divers in Lynnwood. They have a particularly nice program for the frequent diver, in that you can buy a yearly membership that covers all your fills for the entire year (plus giving you a small discount on purchases, as well). They have two levels of membership, one for air, and one for Nitrox. If you dive a lot, it's a really good deal!
What kind of diving...shore/boat? We have lots of both. As I mentioned, there are two good shore diving spots in Mukilteo, and there is the Edmonds Underwater Park, which is a marine preserve with HUGE ling cod and cabezons. If you pick up the
Northwest Shore Dives book, you'll get a lot more information about shore diving locations, with the most important thing of all: how current intensive the site is, and how to calculate slack for that site. Tides and currents have enormous importance for Puget Sound divers. A site can be wonderful if the time is chosen properly, when doing it at the wrong time can range between inconvenient and annoying, and downright dangerous.
We have a number of charter operators (not as many as we used to
) but most of them run either out of the Tacoma area (Bandito Charters) or out of Anacortes or the San Juans. There are a couple of boats running in the mid-sound. Many of their dates are booked by clubs or shops, and you arrange to get on the boat by booking through them, rather than the boat itself. There is a LOT of diving available to someone with his own boat. The
Northwest Boat Dives book is back in print, and another very good reference is Scott Boyd's
Northwest Wreck Dives.
Water temp? It runs in the mid 50's in summer, and the mid to upper 40's in winter. Visibility ranges from downright awful (I had a couple of dives last summer with, I swear, about two feet of viz) to occasionally amazing, but averages between 10 and 20 feet.
Exposure protection is really, really important here, if you want to enjoy your diving. The vast majority of people go very quickly to dry suits, especially for winter diving. It isn't just the water temperature -- it's getting out of 47 degree water into 42 degree air that gets you!
When you're here and established and ready to go diving, feel free to shoot me a PM. The MMM group would be much better to show you those sites than I would be, but I'd be happy to meet up and show you around Edmonds, a site I know pretty well.
