Today, we made our fourth successful Southern California beach dive – and they’ve all been in Laguna. I think I may have finally been convinced of the merits of beach diving (in Laguna anyway – you’re not going to drag me back to Leo Carillo or Old Marineland anytime soon!)

We hit Shaw’s Cove, in Crescent Bay (off Wave Dr, right next to Laguna Sea Sports). Shaw’s was actually the site of my first attempted beach dive back in November ’99 – the first place my scuba class went after the pool. It turned out to be a rather poor choice that day, with monster waves that kicked the bejeezus out of most of us just trying to go in for a skin dive. The instructor eventually called off the SCUBA portion of the day entirely, but not until I’d already been totally put off the idea of beach diving by my bad experience.

Turns out that when conditions are good, Shaw’s is in fact a very pleasant dive. The stairway down to the beach is a little bit longer than Diver’s Cove or Picnic Beach, but not nearly as bad as Marineland, Woods Cove, or a dozen others – in other words, we both found it pretty do-able. At the bottom, there’s a rocky point jutting directly out into the ocean from the right side of the beach; that’s what we planned to follow.

Not that we didn’t have a few hiccups on the way to the dive. First, there are no facilities at Shaw’s Cove, so I dragged poor Jeff on a mini-hike all the way over to Heisler Park for a bathroom stop. Then, I realized I’d forgotten my flat mask and snorkel, and would have to dive with my HydroOptix (not the end of the world, but I prefer to be able to see on the surface when doing beach dives). Then, I remembered that snorkels are mandatory in Laguna, and the lifeguards will turn you around if you don’t have one – so I walked up to the scuba store a few blocks away and rented a pink snorkel for the day. But wearing a snorkel always makes my HO mask leak – so I wound up borrowing Jeff’s old flat mask instead.

We finally suited up a little before 9am, and headed down to the beach. The surf was almost nonexistant; the occasional 1-2 footer just about reached my waist. Much better than the last time I was here! We made it in without incident, and descended near the rocky point.

We headed south until we came to the crack in the rocks known as “the crevice,” one of the main draws of this site. On a low-surf, low-surge day like today, it was easy to go swimming inside the crevice, through some rocky arches and swim-throughs. We saw lots of fish in there (mostly garibaldi), a huge pile of big lobsters hiding out in a crack, Proliferating Anemones (short pink/purple anemones with thin, short, tapered tentacles), chestnut cowries, and several partially-devoured spiny sea stars (by what, I can’t imagine).

Picture of the crevice from California Diving News:

In the middle of poking around in the crevice, we discovered our camera had been accidentally left on “Land mode,” so none of the pics were really coming out. Oh well!

After checking out the crevice, we continued south along the reef. Jeff spotted a sole in the sand, and an octopus curled up into a hole in the rocks. We also saw several obviously-new divers – Shaw’s is a popular place for classes. One guy was compulsively checking his gauges, and so completely unable to notice that I was pointing out a sole directly under him. Some others kicked up enough sand to reduce the 20+ visibility back down to 10-15 – still pretty good for a beach dive!

The biggest surprise to me was the temperature. On our last beach dive, at nearby Picnic Beach, we found it extremely cold at depth – low 50s! But today, it didn’t go below 66 degrees, even down around 40 feet. We were mostly up around 25, in 68 degree water. I could have done without the hood!

We’d definitely like to go back and check it out some more. Maybe we’re finally learning to love beach diving, which would definitely help save us some money! :)