Rockaway Beach / Norrander's Reef is a east-facing shore dive in WA. Typically, visibility here is about 18 ft (range 5–25 ft), based on 59 pnwdiving reports from 2021 through 2026. For the site briefing, see dive planning for Rockaway Beach.
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Recent Visibility Reports
Dive report for 6/29/26
- Visibility
- A chunky 10-15 feet (incoming tide)
Dirona albolineata, northern leopard dorid, Monterey dorid, Hermissenda sp., noble sea lemon, three lined aeolid, barnacle eating dorid, nanaimo dorid, Cadlina sp., Dendronotus albus, Coryphella sp., orange and white tipped nudibranch. lingcod, painted greenling, tubesnout, pile perch, striped seaperch, kelp greenling, fried egg jelly, sea gooseberry, ochre star, mottled star, blood star, armpit blood star, zooanthids, giant plumose anemone, hydroids, kelp, saragassum, yellow branching sponge, red rock crab, decorated crab, pygmy rock crab, stiletto shrimp, dock shrimp, barnacles, channeled top snail
all photos taken with an iphone 16 in a Divevolk Platinum housing with macro +8 lens.
Dive report for 5/3/26
- Visibility
- A snowy <5 feet (low tide)
Two dives at low tide here, which made for an interesting experience! Visibility was QUITE terrible (<5 ft) through Norrander's Reef (the main structure, West end starting at 35'), with no clearing up even on the East & deepest end at about 50'. At 0' and -2' tidal exchanges, the buoy basically started at 4' and 2' depth, respectively 😅
But my goodness is this sight incredible -- even with the crappiest viz in a while, we saw TONS of nudis (at least 6 different species), few painted greenlings, one brown rockfish, few shrimp, bunch of tiny hermit crabs. White-lined dirona pretty-in-pink, cockscomb, few ring-spotted Dorid, tons of baby opalescent nudis, plenty of sea lemons, etc., a few species I've seen in Greg Jansen's book but need to look up their names :)