SoCal Freediving
Avalon and the Catalina shoreline from the water

Santa Catalina Island

Catalina is where we’d start.

Twenty-two miles from the mainland, and the back side of the island holds the best water within a day’s reach of Los Angeles.

The crossing is short enough to go and come back in a day, which is the whole reason Catalina is first. Everything further out costs a weekend.

The lee side is the draw: kelp in the coves, structure along the drop-offs, and water that stays workable when the mainland is blown out. It is also busy in the summer, so the trips that are worth running are the ones that go where the boats don’t.

Starting points

What we’d run here

These are guesses. Tell us we’re wrong.

Guided freedive trips

Kelp beds, drop-offs and quiet coves in small groups. For divers who already have the training and want better water than the mainland gives them.

Learning to freedive

Most people who want to try this don’t need a certification — they need someone in the water with them the first few times. Breath-hold basics, equalization, and how not to scare yourself.

Snorkeling trips

No certification, no depth, no pressure — just clear water and calm coves. The easiest way to show somebody why you keep going back.

Boat excursions

Not everyone wants to get in the water, and that’s fine. Time on the channel, the island from the water, and a good reason to be out there.

Two freedivers descending between towering kelp stipes in open water

The adventurous one

Untouched water

The back side of the island, and pinnacles like Farnsworth Bank — a mile and a half off Ben Weston Point, purple hydrocoral starting around 54 feet, and usually nobody else out there. Weather-dependent, exposed, and not a first trip. This is the part a boat actually unlocks.

Two wetsuited freedivers descending through a kelp forest

The one we’re building toward

Spearfishing

This one we’re building toward rather than offering today. When it happens it’ll be its own trip — not a speargun bolted onto a snorkel day — and it’ll stay well outside the protected areas. If it’s the reason you’d come out, say so. It moves up the list.

The water itself

Eleven places, and the ones worth the run

Every mark comes from the USGS place-name file or California’s own survey data — nothing here is a guess at where something is. What each place is actually like comes from the state and federal agencies that had to describe it: depths, habitat, kelp, what hauls out where.

Eagle Reef 1 Ship Rock 2 Bird Rock 3 Blue Cavern Point 4 Farnsworth Bank 5 Cat Harbor 6 Little Gibraltar 7 Long Point 8 Casino Point 9 Lover's Cove 10 Church Rock 11 9 10 Avalon 5 nm

Coastline: California Dept of Fish and Wildlife (ds582) and Natural Earth / © OpenStreetMap contributors. Place names: USGS GNIS. Site descriptions: NOAA Office of Coast Survey, CDFW. Pins are place locations, not drop points.

Tap the ones you want to dive. We will build the schedule around whatever gets asked for most.

  • What the charts say
    • Eagle Reef is covered by three feet of water and is marked by growing kelp and by a buoy about 100 yards to its east. NOAA Office of Coast Survey
  • What the charts say
    • Ship Rock sits among offshore rocky reefs and sandy seafloor in the Blue Cavern area, in water ranging from roughly 260 to 2,600 feet deep. CDFW
    • Approaching from the north, Ship Rock stands about a mile off the cove and looks like a black haystack topped with white from bird droppings. NOAA Office of Coast Survey
  • What the charts say
    • Bird Rock offers a steep drop-off wall alongside shallow kelp-covered reefs, with octopus, rockfish and sea cucumbers among the life on it. CDFW
    • Bird Rock stands 37 feet high and runs about 150 yards long, lying roughly 500 yards off the beach. NOAA Office of Coast Survey
  • What the charts say
    • The Blue Cavern Onshore area covers about two and a half square miles of marine habitat reaching depths of nearly 900 feet. CDFW
    • The nearshore Blue Cavern area holds a mix of kelp-filled coves, surfgrass beds, pebble beaches, underwater caves and rocky reefs. CDFW
  • What the charts say
    • Farnsworth Bank is a series of pinnacles and underwater mountains rising from an otherwise sandy seafloor. CDFW
    • Rare purple hydrocoral covers most of the hard surfaces scattered across the bank. CDFW
    • Depths across the offshore Farnsworth area range from about 135 feet to nearly 2,000 feet, with strawberry anemones forming colorful tapestries on the vertical surfaces. CDFW
  • What the charts say
    • Cat Harbor holds eelgrass, tidal flat, rocky shoreline and sandy seafloor, reaching depths greater than 180 feet. CDFW
    • Sea lions and harbor seals are often in the shallows here and sometimes haul out on the rocky shore near the harbor entrance. CDFW
    • Catalina Harbor is a funnel-shaped anchorage open to the south, easy to enter, with anchoring in 4 to 5 fathoms over soft bottom. NOAA Office of Coast Survey
  • What the charts say
    • Long Point is a stretch of rocky reef forming a large ridge that runs down past 90 feet. CDFW
    • The protected area around Long Point reaches about 750 feet deep and covers an aggregation site where giant sea bass spawn in late summer. CDFW
    • Elk kelp and giant kelp here shelter rockfish, barracuda and schools of mackerel. CDFW
  • What the charts say
    • Casino Point covers less than a tenth of a square mile of rocky intertidal, rocky reef and towering kelp forest down to just beyond 70 feet. CDFW
    • Entry is by a staircase and railing leading directly into calm water, described by the state as the easiest beach diving in all the Channel Islands. CDFW
    • Resident life includes kelp bass, California sheephead, garibaldi, senorita, moray eels and horn sharks. CDFW
  • What the charts say
    • Lover's Cove is a small area of rocky shoreline, beaches, reefs and towering kelp forest, with a stated depth range of 0 to 188 feet. CDFW
    • Spiny lobster, abalone, crabs and nudibranchs occur along the sand ripples and in rocky crevices here. CDFW

Nothing picked yet.

Before the boat

What would you actually get on a boat for around Catalina?

Every answer is optional except the email. Interest on its own doesn’t decide anything — what a day is worth and how often you’d go is what decides the boat.