Before I was certified I used to free dive in Palos Verdes and Laguna Beach. My local mudhole was White Point in San Pedro. One day I was snorkeling there and the lifeguard called out to us and said,"Hey, you divers. Parking lot closes in fifteen minutes." We looked at each other and said,"He called us divers!"
Later, when I began scuba diving I made a lot of dives at White Point. Today, Merry and I had to get gas in the boat so we drove around to San Pedro. It's $120 cheaper to fill up there than from the fuel dock in King Harbor where we keep our boat.

On our way home I stopped to check out some numbers from the USGS survey in 1999. There is a spot called White Point Rock a little more than 1/3 mile south of the beach. It jumped more than ten feet off the bottom on our fishfinder so we anchored and quickly geared up.
The surface water was very dirty, typical for White Point. As we descended past ten feet it quickly opened up to twenty feet of visibility. I was pleased to find a life-filled reef similar to Buchanan's. It is small, about the size of a double wide trailer, but covered in life. It was also covered by a net until I removed it.

The reef has vertical ten foot walls, small caves and overhangs. We found nudibranchs, rockfish and gorgonian everywhere. I had only found three Ategema alba nudibranchs before, all at Marineland. We found five today in the first twenty minutes of our dive.

After the dive we played with a pod of dolphin before heading in to beat the rain.

• Re: Dived a new reef at an old dive spot halibug 11:40:41 10/17/10 (0)
• Awesome shots as usual! JohnC 22:21:23 10/16/10 (0)