SoCal Freediving
Remote island coastline and open water

Anacapa · Santa Cruz · the outer islands

Further out, colder, and worth the day.

The Channel Islands are the wilder end of Southern California diving, and the reason people who have dived Catalina keep going north.

This is a longer day and a rougher crossing, and the water is colder than most people expect the first time. What you get for it is visibility and scale that the mainland does not have.

Anacapa and the east end of Santa Cruz are the realistic starting points. Anything past them is an overnight, which is a different boat and a different business — but worth knowing if that is the trip you actually want.

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

Past Anacapa the islands stop being a day trip and start being an expedition — Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and water that sees a handful of divers a year. 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

Five islands, and the water between them

Anacapa and the east end of Santa Cruz are the day trips. Everything west gets progressively harder to reach and progressively emptier. Marks come from the USGS place-name file; the descriptions come from CDFW, the Park Service and NOAA’s Coast Pilot.

Richardson Rock 1 Point Bennett 2 Cuyler Harbor 3 South Point 4 Carrington Point 5 West Point 6 Gull Island 7 Scorpion Anchorage 8 Cathedral Cove 9 5 nm

Coastline: California Dept of Fish and Wildlife (ds582) and Natural Earth / © OpenStreetMap contributors. Place names: USGS GNIS. Site descriptions: CDFW, NOAA Office of Coast Survey, NPS. 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
    • Richardson Rock drops away as sheer vertical walls falling to depths of over 550 feet. CDFW
    • Seals and sea lions come to this remote islet to hunt rockfish that school near its rocky pinnacles. CDFW
    • Above water it is a small, white-topped rock 53 feet high, lying 6 miles northwest of Point Bennett. NOAA Office of Coast Survey
  • What the charts say
    • Point Bennett, at the extreme western end of San Miguel Island, is one of the largest seal and sea lion breeding areas in the world. CDFW
    • In breeding and pupping season the beaches hold more than 70,000 California sea lions, 5,000 northern fur seals and 50,000 northern elephant seals. CDFW
    • The point itself is a long, narrow, jagged bluff 74 feet high that rises rapidly behind to 337 feet. NOAA Office of Coast Survey
  • What the charts say
    • Cuyler Harbor is a bight 1.2 miles long and 0.6 mile wide on the north shore of San Miguel Island, southwest of Prince Island. NOAA Office of Coast Survey
    • Prince Island, the large outcrop just outside the harbor, is one of the most important and biologically diverse seabird nesting sites on the West Coast. CDFW
    • Boaters entering the harbor are met by western gulls, California brown pelicans, cormorants and Cassin's auklets nesting on Prince Island. NPS
  • What the charts say
    • The protected area at Carrington Point covers nearly 13 square miles of surfgrass beds, kelp forests and offshore sandy seafloor, with a depth range of 0 to 211 feet. CDFW
    • Its kelp forests hold kelp bass, giant sea bass, California sheephead and California spiny lobster, and sea lions and seals visit frequently. CDFW
    • Carrington Point is the north point of Santa Rosa Island, with a bold, rocky seaward face 0.8 mile long rising rapidly to 452 feet. NOAA Office of Coast Survey
  • What the charts say
  • What the charts say
    • The Gull Island reserves take in sandy beaches and rocky shorelines, sandy seafloor and rocky reefs, kelp forests, and more than six square miles of deep submarine canyon, over a depth range of 0 to 2,205 feet. CDFW
    • Gull Island itself is 65 feet high and about 0.2 mile across, the largest and outermost of a group of small rocky islets 0.7 mile south of Punta Arena. NOAA Office of Coast Survey
  • What the charts say
    • Cathedral Cove has a narrow, rocky shoreline where sea lions haul out, viewed from an overlook on the north coast of Anacapa Island. NPS
    • The state marine protected areas at Anacapa Island cover sandy beaches, extensive rocky shores, surfgrass beds, kelp forests and deep offshore sand and rocky seafloor. CDFW
    • Wave erosion of the volcanic island has produced towering sea cliffs, sea caves and natural bridges around Anacapa. NPS

Nothing picked yet.

Before the boat

What would you actually get on a boat for around Channel Islands?

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.