Southern California Beach Diving--Getting in is Half the Fun

For people learning to scuba dive in California, beach diving is a right-of-passage, a ticket to be punched, a skill to be demonstrated, and the experience that confers upon the participant the status as an all-around competent diver.   You can complete the entry-level openwater scuba diver course without ever getting sand on your fins, it can all be done from a boat, albeit more expensively.  Conversely, you can complete the course doing dives exclusively from the beach, diving from a boat is not a requirement for certification.  But, beach diving and boat diving are two sides of the same coin; they really do complement each other, making for a complete diver.  But, if you do not or cannot do a boat dive, you are a qualitatively better diver for having done the beach dives. 

California beach diving is more complex than boat diving.  All the latter requires you to do is take a leisurely boat ride to the destination, gear up from the comfort of your station, hop off the boat into the water, and descend—a maneuver made easier by the anchor line functioning as a firmly fixed descent line.  The former requires an ability to cross the beach enter the water, read the surf or get unceremoniously knocked down in the breakers and pushed into the splash zone, all while wearing cumbersome, heavy gear because until we break contact with the bottom, gravity is our enemy.  By comparison, a bear cub in boxing gloves looks as if it has the grace of a ballerina.

Marie DeSantis, in her 1985 book, California Currents:  An Exploration of the Ocean’s Pleasures, Mysteries and Dilemmas, described the following scene:

“Every weekend you can see their cars parked along the highway by the sea, and you can see them on the beach, walking backward into the surf, tripping over their flippers, backward through thousands of years of evolution, trying to keep from getting spit back onto the beach by the breakers that reject and the human form as easily as an old piece of driftwood.  Finally, there is a little lull in the surf, and a dozen black-suited sapiens return to the sea with only the red tips of their snorkels linking them to the air.”

A group of divers, complete with red-tipped snorkels, getting ready to enter the ocean at Sata Barbara's  Arroyo Burro County Park in July 1985.  Backs to the water, they prepare to suffle into the ocean.

I did beach diving for many years in Southern and Central California.  I could be at the beach, geared up, and entering the water within 20 minutes of leaving my house.  They kelp forest beckoned, although it sometimes required surface swimming a good distance while avoiding clumps of tar from the natural oil seeps that dot the seafloor.  But first I had to get into the water, which involved the following steps:

1. Find a parking space close to water’s edge.  If you got to the fog-shrouded, ocean-front park early in the morning before all the other beach goers seized spaces for the duration of sunlight this was not a problem.  Otherwise, you dropped your gear near the edge of the beach and went in search of a space and hoped your gear would still be there once you returned.  An empty parking space next to the sand is called “Hollywood Parking” because most of the time you only see that situation in the movies.  Once while diving an area called “Mesa Lane” or “Mohawk Reef” I parked in a neighborhood near a staircase down to the beach.  Local surfers had a reputation for hassling non-locals, which they defined as anyone who lived on the other side of the nearby traffic light.  Some of them approached prepared to harass me for the transgression of trespassing on their turf.  They relented when they saw me pull the air tank instead of a surfboard out of the back of my truck.
2. Locate a picnic table or space along the sea wall from which you can get into your gear.  Picnic tables at California beaches are nearly as rare as good parking spaces.  Seawalls are usually adjacent to high volume bikepaths, which is about the same as gearing up on a freeway.
3. After doing the SEA of SEABAG dive briefing, gear up trying to avoid getting sand on the inside of your wetsuit, where it transforms “neoprene” into “sandpaper.”
4. Walk across the sand (or rocks) to water’s edge.
5. Put on your fins, one fin at a time.  With one hand on your buddy’s shoulder, bend your knee across the other leg in what is known as the “figure 4” and slip the fin onto the foot securing the fin strap.  You then become the stabilizing post so your buddy can repeat the move for his or her fins.
6. Timing the wave set for a lull, shuffle backwards into the water (it is impossible to walk forward in fins without pitching face first into the sand).  Keep walking backwards giving mutual support to your buddy.  You will feel very clumsy because you are very clumsy.  This maneuver qualifies neither as “walking” or “swimming”.  I have compared it do drunken seals doing the high kicking line dance.  We shuffle to avoid stepping on top of any stingrays that may be lollygagging in the sand. 
7. When waist high, go face down and kick like mad to get through the breaker zone before the lull becimes a non-lull.  If you submerge remember, your snorkel becomes a straw.

After a great dive, you get to repeat the process.  This is not merely a matter of repeating the above steps.  Getting out of the water requires a slightly different calculus that getting into the water.  But that will have to wait for a future blog entry.