Posted by Melvin on December 06, 2002 at 06:20:40:
In Reply to: Diving in Los Angeles posted by Nick Valentine on December 05, 2002 at 19:37:47:
Santa Barbara Island is a great dive and a chance to play with the sea lions. Some locations on this dive trip will have you at 100 feet or so. Sam Clemente is also very good, but depending on where the boat takes you, you could be diving in 100 feet or so which may be a bit much for flying in the morning. The Great Escape (my favorite), Cee Ray, Pacific Star are good boats as are several others priced around $108-130 for a day of diving depending upon destination.
Catalina is very good and the destination for many dive boats. You may enjoy just taking the ferry over and doing casino point in Avalon. Then yo can sight see Avalon afterwards (shopping, art stores etc). Depth there is mosly in the 40 foot range or less wiht a pretty healthy kelp forest. If you don't want to take a boat, shore diving in Southern California is very good as well. Malibu, Malibu Road, Palos Verde, Laguna and LaJolla Cove (San Diego - and bonus a great white has been spotted in the LaJolla area recently) all offer excellent dive sites with kelp forrest and depths in the under 40 foot range for many of the dive sites. Malaga Cove (Palos Verde) is some excellent diving and is in the 10-20 foot depth range, but because it faces north will mostly likely be undivable during your trip(winter swell is from the north, summmer swell from the south). Really it is hard to go wrong in Southern California at any of the local dive sites. http://www.sandeater.org will provide you with a list of local dive sites and their descriptions as well as a swell model. You can also send out an e-mail blast to look for a dive partner if you want.