Shore dive buddies in LA area?

[JollyWaffl]

Hi All,

I'm a Belgian transplant to Pasadena, looking for people interested in shore dives. Anyone here interested, or can offer advice as to how to find people? The club websites I've found so far focus on boat diving, and most of the events listed on Meetup are down in the San Diego area. I never joined a club in Belgium (no need to, I knew a few unaffiliated divers who I'd go diving with), but is that the way to go over here? Should I bite the bullet and plan to drive to La Jolla regularly?

Boat diving's great, but expensive if done regularly. Back in Belgium I was in the habit of going for shore dives (usually quarries or rivers) almost every two weeks, just to enjoy the water, see a bit of life, and to keep my skills fresh. Had hoped to run into people here interested in the same but little luck so far, and after a two-year hiatus I'm really starting to miss the water.

Cheers,
Jw

 

[Andrea VanEpps]

Welcome to California!
I'm a shore diver and, yes, there's not a lot of us it would seem. I only have a few people that I recently found that regularly shore dive and only a couple of the club's. But, yes, the most active are either in San Diego or mostly in Laguna.
There's night dives pretty regular at vets, I hear.
With our weather people trend to boat a lot here. I try to get in beach dives for experience and to keep costs down.

 

[Andrea VanEpps]

If you can make one of these you might meet a few more shore diving folks.... Rocks, Rips, & Reefs – 3R’s | Underwater Unit
And it will get you acquainted with California shore diving.
It's free!
And Eco Dive in culver city has their monthly party the first Tuesday of the month, so that's coming up.

 

[JollyWaffl]

Welcome to California!

Thanks, quite enjoing it here!

There's night dives pretty regular at vets, I hear.

Veteran's park, south of Redondo?

If you can make one of these you might meet a few more shore diving folks.... Rocks, Rips, & Reefs – 3R’s | Underwater Unit
And it will get you acquainted with California shore diving.
It's free!
And Eco Dive in culver city has their monthly party the first Tuesday of the month, so that's coming up.

Nice, thanks for the suggestions! Might be hard to make it to Eco Dive in the week, but I should be able to make it to the 3R's.

- Jw

 

[MaxBottomtime]

South Orange County Dive Club

Laguna Sea Dwellers

All Divers welcomed to join Diver Night

Local Trip Schedule

Diving With DiveVets - DiveVets

 

[geoff w]

If you can make one of these you might meet a few more shore diving folks.... Rocks, Rips, & Reefs – 3R’s | Underwater Unit
And it will get you acquainted with California shore diving.
It's free!
And Eco Dive in culver city has their monthly party the first Tuesday of the month, so that's coming up.

The next LA County 3R session is June 17, and if conditions are good some of us might go for a dive afterwards. I've picked up some semi-regular dive buddies from the 3R sessions. Vets also seems to be a hub for lots of diver activity, so chances are good you will meet plenty of other potential dive buddies there as well

Some of us try to shore dive Malibu weekend mornings, but conditions last year, and lately this year, have been awful. Casino Point is more consistent for shore diving, but it also entails the round trip cost for the Catalina Express and a bigger time commitment than a one tank shore dive

Some dive shops organize free or low cost beach dives, some dive clubs have (somewhat) organized monthly shore dives you could always tag along on, and there are a couple of Facebook groups for local diving, like Dive 805 or https://www.facebook.com/groups/Dive949/

 

[MaxBottomtime]

The DiveVets group also meets at Marineland on Sunday mornings at 8:00

 

[JollyWaffl]

Seems like the consensus is to head to regular gatherings - sounds good, now that I have a list of some active ones.

Thanks everyone!

 

[Andrea VanEpps]

There's also a beach clean up this Saturday....
Newport Harbor Underwater Clean UP - Ocean Conservancy

 

[shucksun]

Here are two places to start that do not require attending a club meeting to join a shore diving outing:

Scuba Diving with South Coast Divers (Southcoast dives Laguna Beach exclusively.) They dive every Saturday morning, conditions permitting.

Pacific Wilderness (Highly Recommended) regularly host "just show up and introduce yourself" dives at both Redondo Beach Veterans Park and Laguna Beach. These are described in the Events Section of their Facebook page. The beach dive schedule is normally posted on Friday mornings. From Pasadena, you can reach the Redondo site in about 45 minutes. Laguna in an hour. Veterns Park is a sand bottom dive but is a great place to start your Socal shore dive experience.

Laguna has some great diving which rivals the Channel Islands with generally a step or two down in vizibility from the islands. See my videos from local diving here: Dark-Thirty Divers