Posted by Steve Herbert on January 10, 2001 at 06:03:37:
I wanted to take a second to toot our own horn and direct everyone to the Sand Eaters Web Page at www.geocities.com/sandeaters where you'll find LOTS of extremely useful links to help you determine if you want to go diving NOW.
Some examples: Water Quality reports from both Heal The Bay and LA County Public Health. (LACPH has MANY beaches right now listed on their site which don't meet state guidelines for safe exposure to the water due to the rains.) Links to LIVE beach web cams stretching from La Jolla to Ventura and at Avalon to SEE what conditions are actually like right NOW. Surf forcasts which not only include the helpful CDIP model but also animated models which look ahead over the next 5 days to help you determine if the swell patterns may make your upcoming dive trip a waste of time (click on Detailed Surf Reports).
There of course is also the tide charts, beach diving site descriptions and pictures, links to this site, California Diving News, LA Underwater Hockey, The Greater Los Angeles Council of Divers, and of course a Calendar of The Sand Eaters weekly dive schedule for the first six months of this year.
The Sand Eaters are a beach diving group which have no dues, no meetings and no official organization. It's run by a small group of experienced divers who's main purpose is to schedule a beach dive someplace in SoCal and then go dive it. They have no commercial ties or any other motives for divers other than to help aid in facilitating diving. I'd highly recommend you spend some time checking out the links on their page. www.geocities.com/sandeaters