Reddit mentions of A Diver's Guide to Southern California's Best Beach Dives

Hey welcome back (i was medically retired from the Air Force and ended up here in San Diego)!

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For San Diego charters you are looking at Waterhorse Charters, Marissa Charters, and Nautilus (they are opening up a local dive boat center soon, one a free trip at the LA dive show from them). Waterhorse Charters is under new ownership and now offers an unlimited boat diving membership option ($x/month hop on any many boat dives as you want). Marissa is still a great operation and you get to have the best boat dog in the area, Captain! They also will go some tech diving places. For boat diving spots that your cert qualifies you for, you have Los Coronados (small islands off the coast of Tijuana) currently only waterhorse goes here, Point Loma Kelp fields Waterhorse and Marissa go here, Wreck Alley Ruby E & HMCS Yukon again both Marissa and Yukon, NOCS Tower (think underwater monkey bar set lol) both charters go here, USS Hogan (130 ft) rarely visited by either charter, Scripps Canyon I think only Waterhorse goes here. The Lois Ann just left service as a dive boat. There is a rumor that The Westerly dive boat is moving from LA to San Diego. Horizon is the main liveboard charter from San Diego but they mostly due shark diving and those trips are $$$, they do other smaller trips and I hear rave reviews but haven't personally gone yet.

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There are some more extreme sites like Cortez banks that are served by some of the San Diego liveaboards that are in your cert range but just costly.

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Shore diving....I really prefer Orange County/LA County for this. Happy to give you more details if you want but the general ones would be La Jolla Cove or La Jolla Shores in the county. For a bit more adventurous shore diving, it's really hard to beat Casino Point on Catalina Island. Both San Diego and LA offer 3R (Rocks, Rips, and Reefs) programs during the summer months that will give you orientations to the areas best shore diving spots. While they are great scuba diving spots the events are snorkel only events that focus on reading the site, safe entry/exit etc, very worthwhile for anyone looking to orient themselves to the area! This is an excellent book for the area btw https://www.amazon.com/Divers-Guide-Southern-Californias-Beach/dp/0962860042/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=diver%27s+guide+to+southern+california&qid=1562649226&s=gateway&sr=8-3

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PowerScuba is a meetup.com group that books a ton of charters and offers it to members (joining is free) basically at cost so very discounted rates. Also do group buys on equipment and travel.

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There is a dive club called Dive Animals that have their own boat, its pretty small and we found very hard to get spots on (we didn't renew membership this year due to that fact) but if you can befriend a boat driver you would have very cheap diving off a very small boat lol.

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If you have the time and want to learn a lot about Southern California diving I would highly encourage you to look at LA County's Advanced Diver Program, it's a county run program and is some of the best training you can get. It's only run once every summer and just started so keep an eye for next year's course if you are interested.

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There really aren't many dive boats out of Orange county so i'll skip that.

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The next place for dive boats is Long Beach harbor (SunDiver 1/2/Express, Magician, Explorer, Pacific Star aka Pac Star) they will do a lot of Catalina Island dives, oil rigs (highly recommended after you get back in the swing of diving but not until you're feeling comfortable with it again), and maybe some of the more remote southern channel islands. Next up you have Ventura which hosts Peace, Specter, and Explorer. They will hit up Anacappa Island and Santa Cruz pretty frequently. Then finally in the "region" you have Santa Barbara you have the Truth Aquatic fleet they'll do the more northern channel islands along with some longer liveaboard trips to other islands or destinations like Big Sur. Almost all of the LA and further north boats are proper liveaboards (so fully galleys and bunks below for sleeping). They are a bit more than the San Diego boats and the drive blows but its worth it!

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During the summer and fall you can probably get away with a 7mm semi-dry suit, but in the winter it gets damn cold. I clocked a 42 degree day on the Yukon this last winter. Luckily San Diego is host to DUI Drysuits (unfortunate name I know but not related to drinking I swear lol). Anyways.... they hold parking lot sales every so often and you get drysuits and a whole bunch of other stuff for super cheap (just clearing out inventory) so keep an eye on facebook. Some brave souls can deal with the cold year round in wetsuits, it's just so much more comfy in a warm drysuit.

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Ok now that i wrote a small novel hope it helps, welcome back, and feel free to ask anything else that comes to mind!

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edit: Forgot to mention dive shops. We mainly use San Diego Divers (best tank fills, tank VIPs, tank Hydros (all the other shops charge more and send the tanks here so skip the middle man), excellent NAUI/tech instructors), House of Scuba (front of the shop is small but they have a huge warehouse behind them and their return policy is unbeatable imho) ,and Ocean Enterprises (biggest in shop display, annual tent sales with unlimited air/nitrox fill cards, just pretty convenient for us). However there are a few others such as Beyond Land Adventures, North County Scuba Center, Oceanside Swim and Scuba Center. There are others I'm sure but those are the ones I have at least been into. Obviously in LA/Riverside/Orange County there are even way more (we have dealt with a few and if you want recommendations let me know).

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It's worth venturing up to LA during the dive show every year i think. Great lecture series, good deals on gear, phenomenal travel deals/raffles, and the party on Saturday is usually kind of fun too.

loosely based on this book: A Diver's Guide to Southern California's Best Beach Dives

one our favorites is paradise cove, but its OC, traffic back is pretty bad, but its pretty fantastic. i try to make a point to get my fills at a shop local to the dive and talk them about the planned dive.

some are pretty bad, but some are great, ill go through my log and post a small list, i wont be able to do this until monday.