Shore diving - Puget Sound

A few of us are heading up from Portland, OR to Puget Sound to do some shore diving ~ July 30, 2011. However, none of us have ever dove these dive sites (neither by boat nor shore). I was hoping there may have been a sticky on Puget Sound diving, but unless I overlooked it, I didn't find anything on the Western United States | Pacific Northwest Orca Bait forum. So, I have some follow-up questions:

1) Any shore diving site recommendations for this time of year where we will have somewhat reasonable vis? I was going off of some Google search results for Puget Sound shore diving (1, 2).

2) Do we need a dive flag?

3) Any recommendations for where to gather tide information?

4) We may need to rent tanks and weights. Would anyone have recommendations for dive shops in the local area?

Thanks for all the help!

Abhishek

1) Any shore diving site recommendations for this time of year where we will have somewhat reasonable vis? I was going off of some Google search results for Puget Sound shore diving (1, 2).

Viz is a crapshoot this time of year. Right now it is (relatively) good -- next weekend, who knows! There are several places you can get current information -- perhaps the best is NWdiveclub.com -- there is also pnwscuba.com -- emeralddiving.com -- seaotter.com -- are all sites that give information (in addition, there is a download from the State that has a map of dive sites).

2) Do we need a dive flag?

In theory, yes. In reality, the only time I see someone use a flag is when they dive off a boat or when they are running a class.

3) Any recommendations for where to gather tide information?

dairiki.org

4) We may need to rent tanks and weights. Would anyone have recommendations for dive shops in the local area?

Depends on where -- Tacoma -- Tacoma Scuba; Seattle -- Underwater Sports or Lighthouse Diving; Edmonds or Mukilteo -- Bubbles Below or NW Sport Divers

There are a couple of places where the dive flag rule is enforced -- I have heard of folks diving off Mike's Beach Resort in Hood Canal getting ticketed for not having one. I don't know of anyplace in the Seattle area where that is true.

The shore diving in Hood Canal is excellent, and I know a lot of Oregon divers go there when they come up to the Sound.

If you come to the Seattle area, you can post on nwdiveclub.com and almost certainly pick up some local buddies who can help with the logistics. A lot of where you dive will depend on where you are going to stay; driving distances are significant and traffic can be horrible, so especially if you are not familiar with the sites, doing the ones that are easily reached from your accomodations is a great place to start.

Thanks so much for all the information and feedback. I think the NW dive club link was most useful. Once we can digest all the information, we'll figure out our trip to Puget Sound and hopefully get some good diving in.