San Diego
California Diving Weather Cycle
Notes About California Charter Boat Diving
3-Day Swell Map
California Diver Network
There is more below, including local useful links, photo galleries, a complete
California Coastal Diving Guide and far more information about California
diving.
If you have a dive story or photos that you think belong here, please
Send Me Your Comments
The California Diving Links page is a very complete list of links
to ocean weather sites, California Diving Web Sites, some Diving
Retailers and various California Park or Marine Services. It also
contains links to other sites that have dive stories. The other link
page points to some of the fantastic diving beyond the California
horizon. Click here to get information and schedules for most any
California Dive Boat.
With eight offshore islands and about 1000 miles of shoreline, there is an
awful lot of diving available. The cool nutrient rich waters produce a
lushness of life matched almost no where else. It is some of the best
diving in the world.
California diving is different from most other places and
created a different kind of diver. It is fairly cold water, which
promotes lush growth and makes more physical demands on the divers.
Because of the cold water and because the Sea Otter was almost
removed from California, game became incredibly abundent. In the
early days of diving, most California divers were hunters. This
made for very dynamic, skilled divers, many using very old hunting
instincts to adapt and move as predators of the underwater reefs,
not just as visitors. For divers like this, whose instincts are
liberated and enervated by the underwater realm, the vast exotic
diving of California becomes an endless adventure and inspiration.
It is their natural place. The concept of taking continuing scuba
classes to get more comfortable diving, is a bizarre idea to them.
How do you become more comfortable in your own home? They have
little interest in equipment, because the most important element
of their diving is the diver, not the gear. Actually, what I try
to describe here, diving as an exciting adventure, can be true of
divers anywhere. There are adventurers who enter the water many
places, but California diving has promoted this more than anywhere
else.
One other thing about California Diving. When cold water diving,
you do not have to be quite as careful of the bottom life as in the
warm water. Coral is incredibly fragile. Algae is among the fastest
growing plants in the world. It is never good to be careless
about it, but pulling along the bottom by grabbing rocks or kelp
holdfasts, does minimal damage in the colder waters and allows the
diver a completely different way to move through the reef. Often
the diver ends up in places that are actually too confined for
really swimming.
Some people know the spots. You have to be a gutsy diver to go where this guy goes.
While I am trying for the most accurate stories I can get, some
may sound pretty incredible. That is why they are in here though.
That is why we dive too. When diving, sometimes we are lucky
enough to see the incredible.
I hope that you enjoy reading this.
California Diving Lore
