Point Lobos State Park, Monterey, California
Point Lobos State Park is on a small peninsula just south of Monterey, Pebble Beach, and Carmel by the Sea. It is some of the best cold water diving (52 degrees in September) you can find in the area with big animals and healthy kelp. The nudibranchs get to 2-3 inches. We saw wolf eels, huge lingcods. cabezon, metridium, eels, anenomes, sunstars, and rockfish. Sea lions and seals were constantly buzzing us. Entry is at the boat ramp and you usually have a long surface swim to the sites before you drop.
http://www.pointlobos.org
• Diving is limited to 15 buddy pairs a day. 30 people total. No solo diving allowed. You may do as many dives as you want but the park is open from 8-7 summer hrs (or till 30 min after sunset in the winter). There are no services such as food or tank fills. A shopping center with a full service supermarket is about a mile away, people stop for sandwiches prior to going into the park.
• You may make reservations up to 2 months in advance but you risk encountering poor conditions on your dive day. A dive calendar is provided on their website. Weekends are usually full. Reservations are non-transferrable and they do ask for the name of your buddy when making reservations. http://www.pointlobos.org/diving/dive-calendar
• Reservations are $10.00 per person http://www.pointlobos.org/diving/reservations
• Once your reservation is confirmed, parking is $10/car at the gate. Your buddy must be present when you get through the entrance gate and show your C-card. (No buddy, no entry and they are Nazis about it.) They can drive separately but they have to follow you.
• Dive sites are listed here http://www.pointlobos.org/diving/dive-areas
If you don’t know diver friends up north to be your buddy, you will have to book a guided tour with a local dive shop. Solo diving is prohibited. Not all dive shops have access to Pt Lobos.
The posted price at Seven Seas Dive Shop:
Point Lobos Dive Tour Pricing, 2 diver or 2-dive minimum - pricing does not include parking or entrance fees
1 diver - 2 Dives $100
2+ divers - $50 per diver per dive
The $100 did not include all of the fees required to dive Point Lobos. Their fee are broken down as $60 for dm guide and $40 for booking fees which would cost you $20 (if you did it yourself and had a buddy).
Parking is $10/car plus a $15 beach fee imposed by the dive shop. Since I wanted to hike the area after the dives I opted to drive separately. Yes, you pay for the guide’s parking as well, another $10. Tanks are $10 ea.
Total spent for 2 dives, no rentals except for tanks $157.10 plus tip. It was a lot more than I expected for a guided beach dive. Since I did not specify a private guide, the shop actually charged another diver the exact full amount to dive with my guide. So we were now a diving threesome. The guide later said “now that I have dove with you, you don’t have to go through the dive shop.
Hiking is gorgeous in the State Park, I spent another 4 hours hiking the park after diving.
Diving Point Lobos can be beautiful, but the waters, the regulations, and the associated fees can also make for a murky and miserable experience. Southern California divers opting to make the long trip north to dive at Point Lobos will find themselves choked with restrictive regulations and non-refundable fees that they may not have experienced when diving Southern California areas.
