SoCal Dive Reports - Let us know about your dive!

[Lopez116]

Site: Shaw's Cove

Date: 7/6/13

Conditions: 1-3' surf, moderate surge, heavy on the middle reef

Water Temp: 68 surface, 66 at depth

Bottom Time: 35 min

Max depth: 35'

Viz: 7-10, 10-15

Long periods between waves made shore entry pretty easy. Viz was better in the inner reef (approx 10-15), than it was in the middle reef. Outside the pinnacles at the end ax depth close to 40', the surge got very heavy). We turned around and headed back, cutting the dive a little short. At time, viz dropped down to 5', which wasn't fun. Overall, not the greatest conditions for diving and its been much better at this spot in the past.

 

[vladodessit]

Sunday Aug. 4 2013
Sundiver Express to Catalina 2 tanks AM trip
Dive #1
Dive Site: Lulu reef
Conditions: Calm, overcast, slight current on and off.
Water Temp:65 surface, 60 at 60'
Visibility:35-50
Dive Buddys: Doug, instabuddy. Best instabuddy I've had so far. Great guy, obviously GUE influenced gear and skills.
Comments: Great dive. Not too many "interesting" sightings but typical Catalina dive with a lot of "typical suspects". Almost winter like thermocline (60F) very shallow, at about 20-25'. Found Surelock weight pocket with soft weights (weight is not written but I think it's a #5 and a #3) with Sport Chalet labels. Must be from rental suit. Posted in lost and found. Was harder to balance buoyancy with an extra weight

Dive #2

Dive Site: Big Geiger
Conditions: Calm, sunny. Some current on and off.
Water Temp: 70 surface, 64 at 70'.
Visibility:40-50
Dive Buddys: Doug
Comments: 51 minutes. Even better dive. MUCH warmer site for whatever reason. Almost tropical feel of nice warm water on the face when exiting thermocline And thermocline was deeper and warmer (64F vs. 60F). Very nice relaxed dive. Sun breaking through healthy kelp, classic California. Nice vis, lotsa creatures: moray eels, octopus or two and all other typical representatives

 

[rdjiv]

Saturday 17 Aug, La Jolla Cove

Conditions: Calm (flat early on, 1-2ft waves by noon), slight surge above 25ft
Visibility: 15-25ft
Water temp: 70°F on surface, 53°F at depth (42ft)
Comments: Did two dives from shore, each out and back on a different bearing for each dive (000°M and 030°M respectively). Bottom time for each was roughly an hour. Crazy amount of wildlife, from fishes (garibaldi, kelp bass, sheephead), inverts (spiny lobster, limpets, giant spined stars) and mammals (sea lion and humans both). First dive in SoCal and am looking forward to many more.

 

[lamarpaulski]

CASINO POINT: Tuesday September 3rd 2013:

Conditions were pretty good and there were only a few divers in the water after the three day weekend. A moderate surge was present and some current running South ? , towards the harbor. Viz was 20-30-40 with some milkiness and particulates depending on where you were. I did a modified Dr. Bill tour where I headed out, hit 70 feet...and proceeded to the wreck of the Su Jac then angled up the slope to return back in shallower water through the kelp beds and back to the stairs area. At 60ft there was a major thermocline...the balmy 70ish water chilled a lot !!

I anticipated this and wore hood and gloves but it still was cold and much more murky at depth...pretty unpleasant actually only saw a dead flying fish in this region...swam thru the hole in Su Jac and headed slowly up when a HUGE Giant Sea Bass (guess that's the opposite of a tiny shrimp) swam over me headed to the harbor. Biggest one I've yet seen...almost scary big. The return through the shallow kelp was much cleaner viz-wise and was WARM. I saw many, many, of the usual guys...for some reason octopus, eels, lobsters, baby scorpion fish and abalone were all out in unusual abundance and I saw also saw four fairly large horn sharks hiding in the caves and grottos. I fed the dead flying fish to some lobsters and they fought like crazy over it and were joined by a tiny moray eel. The lobsters were not impressed by the little eel although he struck an aggressive pose. As I poked around with my light in the holes I again encountered three (3) Guadalupe Cardinalfish. Beautiful fish with a peach-orange belly that transitions to a lavender back. They have two separate dorsal fins. They were somewhat bigger than the ones I saw last year so maybe some of that bunch survived. Like last year they were all back in the mini caves (full of lobster and abs) at about 15-20 feet depth, maybe 75 yds from stairs. I looked hard for the exotic damselfish from last year but no luck. Really the shallow diving was very good but the deeper diving was a waste of air. Second dive I just stayed shallow and looked at all the critters. Very relaxing. Just a great day overall.

 

[rdjiv]

Saturday 31 Aug, La Jolla Cove

Conditions: Calm, mild surge
Visibility: 10-15ft
Water temp: 65°F on surface, 55°F at depth (32ft)
Comments: Brought another buddy out to the Cove for a check-out dive. Conditions were worse than last time - vis had dropped and water was pea-soupy beyond 10ft. Surge was up as well but dropped to reasonable limits below 30ft. First dive we did an out-and-back pattern perpendicular from the life guard shack. Less fishes due to the conditions, but the Garibaldi were still patrolling their areas. Second dive we attempted to check out the caves but surge reduced vis so we just went out away from the southern shore on 330°M. Re-oriented at mid-dive and headed VFR direct to the beach, encountering many hiding spiny lobster and territorial Garibaldi on the way in. The sun popped out and the incoming tide helped to provide better vis.

Now its time to get prepped for lobster season and check out some other sites. Any recommendations?

 

[Poseidons Playground]

Dive Site: Tajiguas Santa Barbara
Conditions: Calm, sunny. No current.
Water Temp: 61 surface, 58-61'.
Visibility:10-20
Dive Buddys: Tom
Comments: Saw multiple octopuse

 

[Poseidons Playground]

Refugio State Beach Santa Barbara
Surf: calm, 0-1'
Conditions: sunny, clear, no wind
Water temp: 59
Visibility: 15-20
Comments: Had some great macro opportunities with Nudibranchs, crabs, snails, and small Gobies. First time in a little while I have seen large rockfish around rock formations, and bait fish were everywhere.

 

[KRL1973]

No reports yet in 2014?? Is there a boycott on dive reports on this site I am unaware of?
Well I just made the drive down from the SF Bay area to dive La Jolla for the 1st time 4/14-15.
at the cove, moderate to strong surge, vis a green 10ft. out near the closest buoy in 40-50fsw.
On 4/15 pm also did a dive at marine room along the shallow reef wrapping around towards the cove/caves. This didn't seem very promising at first but turned out to be a lot of fun. Vis maybe 12ft in 15-20fsw lot's of the usual Socal critters and fish also saw a horn shark, and had a soupfin and then a 7gill shark pass by me which really made the dive. Didn't see any leopard sharks over the sand this time (snorkelled same place on 4/13 and saw a dozen of more along with several bat and sting rays)

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Plenty of reports in the SoCal forum below the sticky.

 

[Poseidons Playground]

I've been posting SoCal area reports by people to my twitter page.Check it out https://twitter.com/SoCalPoseidon.

Ventura/malibu 10-15 murky vis, light surge, 64-67 temp.

LA / OC 15-25 vis, light surge, 65-70 temp.

Sandiego 20-30 vis, no surge, 66-70 temp.

Catalina and the Channel islands are awesome with 70 temp, great vis, little current

0-2 swell throughout the SoCal area.

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