Catalina Island

Catalina Island is located 22 miles off the coast of Los Angeles, a popular tourist destination that has beautiful beaches and fun activities for people to enjoy. One of these activities that many tourists come to Catalina Island for is scuba diving. The easiest way to scuba dive Catalina island is to board a dive boat or the ferry from San Pedro, Long Beach, or Orange County. You can find many attractions underwater that are just as beautiful as Catalina Island itself!

Catalina Island has been a popular tourist destination since the early 1900s. Steamer service from mainland California began in 1907 and by 1920, Catalina Island became a playground for Hollywood stars who frequented the upscale resorts. Like most Western U.S. states, tourism on Catalina grew exponentially after World War II when Americans embraced automobile travel. The newly built Pacific Coast Highway opened direct access to Catalina Island via ferry. By 1990, tourism to Catalina peaked at about 4 million visitors a year.

Catalina is unusual in that it has some of the harshest living conditions for any insular ecosystem, yet it has one of the richest marine environments found in Southern California. Seas are usually calm, and divers have a seemingly endless variety of dive sites to choose from along with an abundance of sea life – a scuba divers paradise! Common species include lobsters, crabs, flatfish, many varieties of rockfish, sheephead fish, giant sea bass, blacksmith, and yellowtail. The most commonly sighted mammal underwater besides divers are California sea lions.

Dive Sites

There is no better way to learn how to scuba dive than on your own time and at your convenience. Luckily for people who would like to become scuba divers, many different places around Catalina Island offer scuba lessons for beginners, in a safe and fun environment.

Catalina Island is the perfect place to utilize your scuba certification because there are so many different dive sites to explore with a variety of marine life, coral, kelp forests, lobster hunting (when it’s a lobster season), and much more! Talk with a local dive shop about the dive boats and dive trips they take to Catalina Island. Below are various dive sites I visited during three dive trips between June – October 2021. Enjoy!

Rock Quarry

Rock Quarry is a unique dive site where I had my first dive from a boat, which I have quickly learned is much more ideal than shore scuba diving! Conditions are generally calm at this popular dive spot and visibility is generally pretty good (around 45-50 feet visibility when I dove here). There are giant rocks that cascade from shore into the water leaving lots of spots for ocean critters to call home. There is a kelp forest and home to the tropical butterflyfish. Swimming through the kept forest is a beautiful and soothing experience, unique to the west coast.

There is much sea life to be found in the rock cervices – lobster, various fish, colorful garibaldi, even an octopus my dive instructor pointed out who was tucked away between the rocks. This was good motivation to purchase a dive light to be able to see what sea critters are hiding between the rocks. Learning how to scuba dive slowly and take my time is something I am still learning, as it is easy to swim too fast and miss marine life. Further below at around 60 feet, a giant black sea bass took an interest in us and came right up to my dive buddy! 

Farnsworth Bank

Farnsworth Bank is a special dive spot – there is purple hydrocoral! About two miles off Catalina Island, you will find the only place divers can see purple hydrocoral as usually, it is too deep to dive to. This dive site is unique in several ways, there is almost a prehistoric feel to the underwater world of this dive spot. I performed my deep-water training dive here and at our deepest depth of 95 feet, we were greeted with quite a unique sight of a large torpedo electric ray floating in the water. The ray was an interesting sight to see, floating in the water and not actively swimming.

We also were lucky to see several sculpin fish perched on rocks and many large lobsters hiding in the cracks. The beautiful purple hydrocoral was the main star of the show, even more, vibrant and abundant than I had seen in photos. I will never forget my dive at Farnsworth Bank, I cannot recommend it enough! 

Starlight Cove

Starlight cove is a dense beautiful kelp forest with lots of curious fish. I saw a large kelpfish posed perfectly with the kelp. They blend in so well with the kelp I wonder how many I’ve swum right past without seeing them.

During this dive, we briefly lost a diver in our group when she became entangled in the kelp. This was a reminder of a few important parts of safe scuba diving:

• Always dive with a knife or something sharp for entanglements,
• If you lose someone in your group look for them no more than one minute and surface if you cannot locate them
• Always dive with a buddy

Because we followed all safety procedures, everyone made it back to the dive boat safely and had a good time!

Johnson Dock

The kelp forests around Catalina island continue to amaze, the serenity of swimming through the kelp swaying in the waves. The giant kelp forests can be found in many dive spots around Catalina island. This particular dive site had a dense kelp forest with lots of marine life hidden between the kelp. The most unique notable fish was a giant halibut that swam right past us. If only we could have caught it to eat!

Hen Rock

This spot had several large rock reefs with sandy bottoms between the reefs. This was the first dive spot I had the opportunity to practice underwater photography. Using a GoPro in an underwater case, I tried to manage taking pictures and film my dive – but it was not easy as I kept forgetting to point my camera at all the cool stuff! Underwater photography will take some practice, I have attached some of the photos I was able to capture. This dive site had many hiding lobsters, curious garibaldis who would swim right up to me trying to get a better look at who this creature was blowing all the bubbles!

Long Point

This spot is near a nature preserve, which means divers and fishermen are not allowed to hunt, fish, or bring and marine life out of the water. Because of the nature preserve, this site had the most fish freely swimming around. There were several groups of schooling fish swimming, you could even see multiple large schools of fish at the same time. It was easy to see how the fish knew this was a safe spot to flourish!

A lesson to be learned with navigation, I had the correct coordinates on my compass but way overshot my starting point as I had not kept track of the kick count from the dive boat. It is important to keep track of both compass coordinates and kick count to navigate successfully.

Red Bluffs

On the way to this spot, we saw a pod of whales! From the dive boat we saw their humps swimming out of the water and their giant blowholes of water spraying when they would breathe. Seeing whales was quite the treat! Red bluffs has red large rocks cascading into the water. This dive was mostly shallow and there was a surge which made swimming more challenging.

It was lobster season at this time and we attempted to find and catch some lobsters. We stumbled upon a large lobster den with about 20 lobsters hidden inside, piled on top of each other trying to move back as far as they could. We were unsuccessful at catching any as the den was too deep and the bigger ones who are of legal size are quick and smart! This could make for a good snorkeling spot as there are many shallow spots to see marine life.

Isthmus Reef

Isthmus reef is a large stretch of shallow rocky reef (15-30 feet) with a drop-off on the sides. I dove two dives on this site, one in the day and one at night. During the day there was a large surge so we stayed started by swimming against the current and stayed close to the boat. During the day we saw many lobsters hidden in caves, which made us excited for the night dive as we were going to try lobster hunting for the first time! The lobsters we spotted during the day were too small to be caught.

Isthmus Reef Night Dive

Night scuba diving is always a fun and exhilarating experience Thankfully there was no surge at night. We had the best time lobster hunting! Read my full post about lobster hunting to learn more (license, equipment, how to catch, etc). It is important to remember that it is illegal to bring lobsters out of the water who are not of legal size, which means you must measure your lobster with a gauge underwater to make sure they are big enough to bring out of the water. This is super important to prevent overfishing of these creatures! Keep in mind your mask magnifies underwater so lobsters appear larger underwater than they actually are!

I never ever thought I would say this, but spiny lobster is so tasty that we both liked it better than king crab!

Ship Rock

Ship rock is large rock sticking out of the ocean about a mile off shore that looks like well, a ship! When descending, there is a deep cascade down with deep rocky reef and tall scattered kelp. I used my dive light for a better look between the rocks and in holes. I saw three horn sharks sleeping in holes between the rocks and one giant moray eel. This was the only dive where I saw no lobsters!

Eagle Reef

Eagle Reef had a mix of a large shallow reef and some deeper areas for divers to explore. I dove mostly shallowly and spotted lots of sea critters, including, two moray eels, several sculpins, rockfish, and sea stars. There were a few lobsters were hiding in rocks, but they were too small to catch. We politely waved hello to the marine life and kept swimming.

Black Rock

Black rock has a beautiful giant kelp forest, lots of vegetation, and lots of underwater critters to discover. There were brightly colored red rocks under the water and lobsters hiding in the cracks. I spotted a moray eel on during this dive as well. Outside of the water, there was a cave just above the water and I wondered if there was an underwater cave as well but it was too far of a swim.

Final Thoughts

The Catalina Island marine life is spectacular and offers many great scuba diving opportunities and is a place I will continue to visit. The experiences with lobsters were an exhilarating adventure and something I hope to repeat as they are an integral part of the Catalina island diving experience – and very tasty! Scuba diving at Catalina island can be challenging, but it is also a very rewarding way to see Catalina Island’s underwater world.

Have you ever gone scuba diving at Catalina Island? I would love to hear about your experience in the comments below!