Dive Travel Notes:
Breakwater, Monterey, California
By Fofo Gonzalez, April 2015.
Would you need a guide? You could go without a guide as long as you are careful and comfortable diving in cold water. Here are a couple of interesting links:
New Monterey diver information
So, for the Breakwater, at the parking lot there are some metered parking spots, for others you have to use the pay station. $10 for the whole day or $1.50/hr. And do pay! The parking police makes the round throughout the day.
I prefer the lower parking lot, as close to the stairs as possible. You can take a walk along the breakwater to take a look at conditions. An easy dive is to get in the water, you'll notice that there are some numbers painted on the side of the wall, swim out to the 7.5 mark (don't swim close to the wall, since people are often fishing there) and descend there, you'll drop in about 40 ft of water. If you don't see the wall right away (a jumble of rocks, actually) swim south until you find it, and then swim out, keeping the wall on your right.
Take it easy. In California it's more about finding the small stuff: nudibranchs, octopuses hiding in small holes, brittle stars under the rocks, rockfish, gobies, etc. If you swim fast you'll miss a lot of stuff. A light could be handy to look under rocks. When it's time to turn around swim back keeping the wall on your left now. The wall makes a left turn and you'll find a steep sand slope that will bring you back to 15-20 ft. You can do your safety stop and if you still have air left you can swim on a 250 degree heading toward the beach, surfacing when you reach 500 psi or 6-8 ft of depth.
It's been pretty cold recently! Another good dive would be to stay in the "middle reef" area. From the stairs, slightly to the left and about in the middle of the cove there's some kelp. That's in about 15-20 ft, so the water will be warmer, there will be more sunlight, you can last longer and since you'll be diving in kelp it's probably more what you are looking for. Sea lions and seals may come there, but to see them for sure diving the wall and getting close to the end of it pretty much guarantees that you'll see them underwater.
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