Posted by Ross-O on May 27, 2002 at 23:58:38:
In Reply to: Re: Haggerty's - a dive report posted by seahunt on May 27, 2002 at 21:37:09:
Hi Seahunt,
Haggerty's is between Malaga and Flat Rock on the North facing side of Palos Verdes. It's briefly mentioned on page 51 of Dale Sheckler's Southern Clalifornia's Best Beach Dives book - a book that no SoCal beach diver should be without! If you drive from Malaga Cove towards Flat Rock you'll pass a church and then a house on your right. There won't be any more houses on the right for an 1/8th mile or so. There is a scary looking dirt path right past the house after the church. This is the one I'm referring to.
We went there again today and saw a Black Sea Bass! Here is a summary copied from an email:
Today was beautiful and we just had to get outside. We were both sore from the whiplash (got in car crash yesterday) and Beth didn't think she could make it up and down the hill with SCUBA gear on. We contemplated doing some free diving so we drove down to PV to check the conditions. The surf was flat and the vis was the best I've ever seen. We could see the rocky bottom at 15' from the top of the cliff! The conditions were too perfect to miss so Beth decided to tough it out and we rushed home to get the SCUBA gear. We arrived back at Haggery's and negotiated the climb down to the water. We snorkeled out for a long ways just looking at the beautiful rock bottom teaming with life. Once we dropped down, I immediately spotted a Giant Black Sea Bass! Well, I'm not sure if you can call them giants when they are still a baby but this one was between 30-36" and was the largest "bass" shaped fish I've seen yet. (I've 5 ft angel & soup fin sharks but I bet this fella outweighted them). It wasn't scared at all and let us swim around it at arm's length for many minutes. One time opened it's mouth really wide like it was yawning - Beth and I were both surprised at the size of that mouth! We took about 5 pics of it with our little cheapo underwater camera. Hopefully they'll come out OK so we'll have proof! That was definitely the highlight of the dive but we also saw tens of big lobsters and a bunch of sheep crabs that had leg spans of between 1-2 feet. The good vis continued throughout the dive and we swam back through beautiful kelp seeing the usual assortment of Garibaldi's, lots of little fish I can't yet ID, and several 2-3 ft long horn sharks sleeping in the grass on the bottom. This was the best shore dive I've had yet. I love SoCal beach diving!