As a visitor to the LA area who has done shore diving off the mainland, shore diving off Catalina, and boat diving on a number of sites, I'd look for a boat or boats.
There's good diving from shore on the mainland. There's very pretty diving from shore on Catalina. But there are so many sites with different attractive features that you can reach from a boat or boats.
If you do a liveaboard, you can get out to San Miguel, where the weather and ocean conditions can be challenging, but the diving is goosebump-producing -- spectacular color and topography, mixed with the ubiquitous kelp of the Channel Islands. Of the places I have been there, and despite the fact that I've gotten beaten up a bit there, San Miguel has my heart. The Peace boat is amazing, too -- with an exceptionally professional crew, an excellent layout, and if Joe is cooking, unbelievable food for a dive boat. I'll be on the Peace in a little over two weeks, and I can't wait.
If you do day boats, as Claudette says, you have a lot of site options -- but with your experience, I'd highly recommend trying to get on a boat to the oil rigs at least once. The rigs are a unique dive, combining fabulous, science-fiction worthy structure with prolific sessile life, and an opportunity to see odd pelagic species, like an amazing variety of salps and jellies. If you like photography, the rigs provide some amazing opportunities.
Do talk to Claudette -- if it is there to be done in SoCal, she has done it and knows precisely how it is optimally done.
There's good diving from shore on the mainland. There's very pretty diving from shore on Catalina. But there are so many sites with different attractive features that you can reach from a boat or boats.
If you do a liveaboard, you can get out to San Miguel, where the weather and ocean conditions can be challenging, but the diving is goosebump-producing -- spectacular color and topography, mixed with the ubiquitous kelp of the Channel Islands. Of the places I have been there, and despite the fact that I've gotten beaten up a bit there, San Miguel has my heart. The Peace boat is amazing, too -- with an exceptionally professional crew, an excellent layout, and if Joe is cooking, unbelievable food for a dive boat. I'll be on the Peace in a little over two weeks, and I can't wait.
If you do day boats, as Claudette says, you have a lot of site options -- but with your experience, I'd highly recommend trying to get on a boat to the oil rigs at least once. The rigs are a unique dive, combining fabulous, science-fiction worthy structure with prolific sessile life, and an opportunity to see odd pelagic species, like an amazing variety of salps and jellies. If you like photography, the rigs provide some amazing opportunities.
Do talk to Claudette -- if it is there to be done in SoCal, she has done it and knows precisely how it is optimally done.
