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This page is dedicated to Burchard Yaryan, a dive partner, my dentist, and a friend who died in an unfortunate diving accident off Pt. Loma which reminds us that you can never ascend too slowly.

As you can probably imagine it is not really easy to mark the exact location of offshore sites without the reference of a buoy or a GPS. Since I have not taken a GPS out with me yet to mark the coordinates of good spots ( as I will in the future) all I can do is talk about it and show some pictures. Southern California has perhaps some of the best kelp beds in the world. In all the places that I have visited there has never been a spot quite like our local kelp beds. There are two sets of beds, one runs around the La Jolla area while the other is around Pt. Loma. Both are good but I prefer the Pt.Loma beds due to the unique pinnacles and shelves found along the bottom. It's not hard to locate the kelp beds and with the help of a fish finder or bottom mapper ( so you can find the water depth ) it makes the task extremely easy. If your heading out of Mission Bay you can turn left and go to the Pt. Loma beds or right to go to the La Jolla ones. You'll find them from there. The depths of the kelp beds can vary anywhere from 35-70+ feet ( based on my personal experience) so if you want to go deep or shallow is totally up to you. The inner kelp usually lies in 30- 40 feet of water and the outer kelp is deeper around 60 feet. Another good thing about diving in the kelp is that there is no sand to walk through on the way to the water or no steps to climb. You just jump right in and dive. The visibility is also about 10-20 feet better on average than the visibility you will find shore diving. The easiest way to make a kelp dive if you're visiting San Diego is to book a dive on one of the local dive boats that go out. They depart daily for the Kelp Beds and some other popular places like wreck alley. Click here to access some photographs shot in the kelp.