Posted by Max Bottomtime on September 14, 2001 at 14:49:58:
In Reply to: REDONDO BEACH DIVING posted by Scuba-Doo on September 14, 2001 at 00:45:37:
My first piece of advice would be to turn off your caps lock. Second, beginning at King Harbor, a good bug spot is the breakwall. You can do this without the boat. Heading south, there is Redondo Canyon, which is a great dive in the Winter when the squid are mating. Next are the old pier pilings and the jetty. The Palawan and the Sacramento wrecks lie offshore here if you like to dive deep. Closer to shore, there is a small reef off Rat(right after Torrance) Beach. Shallow kelp diving begins at Malaga Cove. Offshore from here are the small wrecks of a mobile crane and what's left of a landing craft. During lobster season, the rocky reefs from Malaga Cove to the L.A. breakwall will be covered by divers night and day. The wreck of the Avalon lies off Chiswick Drive. Can be a good bug spot early in the season. There are various spots nearby with local names not found on charts, including Drainpipe, Toilet Bowl Reef and Paddleboard Cove. South of Drainpipe is the Gauntlet. This is a line of legal lobster traps streched along the boundry from Rocky Point to Point Dume. Any trap found North of here should be destroyed and reported to DF&G. As you head around the extensive kelp bed of Rocky Point, you can see wreckage of the Dominator on the beach and, at low tide, what remains of the stern section sticking out of the water. Diving in Lunada Bay can be hazardous to your boat. Not so much by the waves, but by the Bay Boys, a local terrorist group of surfers. Honeymoon Cove and Christmas Tree Cove are next. The visibility here averages about ten feet better than the West side of the peninsula. There are numerous pinnacles offshore from Whale Rock at Pt. Vicente. The rocky reefs rise from depths of 80-100 feet+ to within five feet of the surface in places. It's not Farnsworth, but a very nice dive. Pt. Vicente Fishing Access is another site where you can watch lights under water move all over the place on opening night. Buchanon's Reef is another series of rocky reefs from 70 feet up to ten feet. Marineland has a lot to offer, but is not known as a producer of many large bugs. There are a few here and there. The landslide caused by the Ocean Trails golf course has temporily ruined a lot of diving in the area between Abalone Cove and White Point. Try diving here after a few days of Santana winds. The diving from White Point to Pt Fermin is mostly 20-40' with sand, rocks and kelp. Visibility can be good a few days out of the year, but it averages between five feet to fifteen feet most of the time. Cabrillo Beach does not offer any good diving, except when the rare chocolate lobsters are in the area. The L.A. breakwall is home to every kind of plant and animal you will find on the peninsula, all in a relatively small area. Diving here is from as shallow as one foot to fifty feet. A buddy of mine got an 18 pound lobster in less than two feet of water two years ago, then released it when he noticed it was a female with eggs. The Middle Breakwall can be a great producer of legal size bugs. For the photographer, there are numerous varieties of Nudibranchs. If you are interested in the shipwrecks of the peninsula, check out http://members.home.net/pacificcoast101/
and also http://www.cawreckdivers.org/