pnwdiving
Dive report for 8/1/25
Visibility: 20+ feet
Great vis 20-25ft. Schools of juvenile herring in the kelp. Lots of finger sponges in the narrow channel near Lopez Island. Two GPOs, tons of colorful sponges and hydroids covered with nudibranchs. Slack before flood was early.
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🤙 Scuba Jess, pnwdiving.com Dive report for 7/15/24
Visibility: 30+ feet, 15 feet in the shallows
Amazing sea cucumber, nudi, and sponge variety. Turns out with enough determination it’s possible to do this from shore with scooter and precisely timing the slack before flood.
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Wow, the currents can really rip there! We usually do it on an ebb, in the lee of the island
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I have attempted that one 2 times swimming from Shark Reef park on Lopez It is feasible with minor tidal coefficient (around 30) and perfect slack. It can be a tricky one
...See MoreI did what Matthieu describes. Gear haul ~2000ft of trail one-way. Hop in on the ebb at Shark Reef and get swept out to the island, tuck into the protection, have a calm dive, and then head back when it turns to flood. If I do this again, it would be best to have slack at the end and scooter back at slack. Slack in the middle of the dive here means the growing flood at the end hits the angle of the island and pushes you toward the west side of the island when you'd prefer to return on the east side. It was a -1.6 ebb to a 0.8kt max flood Sunday evening, but still made for a quick trip both directions.
...See More[reposted, 'edited' version deleted itself] Is that a walk in on the Shark Reef Nature Trail? The islet connects to Lopez in only 20-30ft depth of water, with a ~150 ft horizontal separation. Very interesting bathymetry shows downflows could reach to 100+ metres depth near the outside. Live boats/AIS & Sat beacons/signal mirrors/reflective SMBs recommended?
...See MoreYes There is a parking lot at shark Reef sanctuary on lopez Then, you walk down the trail (it splits in 2 but honestly both trails get you to the same point) to the shore. From there, you have direct view on Deadman island and across the pass : cattle point (san juan). I think that this one is a lot easier to be done in the summer , since you have kelp you can hold on to. What I did is to swim across on the surface (save air), catch breath while holding the kelp, then go down. On my way back, took NE heading back to shore. The current is very prevalent so one has to be cautious, even around slack. The main benefit of this dive (to me) is that you are very close to whale rock, where there is a colony of about 40 stellar sea lions, seeing them during your dive at Deadman wall is therefore highly likely
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