Santa Catalina Island, often called simply Catalina Island, is a rocky island about 22 miles (35 km) south-southwest of Los Angeles. The island has a total population of 3,696 people, with almost 85 percent living in Avalon (its only city). It is one of a group of eight islands called The Channel Islands and is a popular destination for divers and tourists alike. While we were in America we visited this wonderful island twice and did two dives on each visit.

Visit 1
The day started off at the ridiculously early time of 04:30am, as we had to get to the ferry port for 05:15 in order to catch the 06:15 ferry. We set off in good time but soon enough were utterly lost and spent a very surreal half hour driving through some downtown Long Beach industrial estate and consequently only caught the ferry in the nick of time (thanks in no small part to a friendly taxi driver who was the only person able to give us sensible directions at 5 in the morning). Anyway we arrived at Santa Catalina Express ferry and checked in.
The journey was pretty non-discript, it took ca. 60 mins and we got chatting to a nice bloke who gave us some tips on where to dive and what to look for (Blue-banded Gobies being the hot tip)

When we arrived in Avalon we made our way to a shop "Scuba Luv", which we had found online, where we hired two cylinders and lead. The dive site (Avalon Underwater Park) was about 10 minutes walk from the shop, on the north side of the island, so they ‘kindly’ offered to hire us a cart for a further $10.

We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the dive site. One could get changed directly at the water and there were lockers provided for any valuables. There was a filling station about 100m away, were we found out that it was also possible to hire gear. The dive park consisted of an area ca. 100m by 250m, which was solely for the use of divers and snorkelers and was marked by four buoys. Exit and entry to the water was very easy, by means of steps with a handrail.

Click here for a sketch (opens in a popup window)

Dive 1:
Once we’d kitted up and hit the water we swam out about 20m and descended to a depth of 10m. The first thing that struck me was the amount of fish, who have become so tame, that they think nothing of swimming right up to you and seeing if you’ve brought any food for them.
Once we’d orientated ourselves we then swam a little further to the beginning of the kelp forest, which is a particular feature of the Avalon Underwater Park. We then dived through the kelp, keeping the shore on our right and staying at a depth of between 10 and 20m.
The visibility was 15m although the guy on the boat had assured us that this was not so great by local standards and the water was a very pleasant 20 degrees.
We didn’t see anything too extraordinary on our first dive. There were hundreds of kelp bass and lots of Garibaldi California State fish, who even tried to peck the yellow Seaman Sub logo from the back of my glove. Other than this we saw some barracuda, a bat ray and lots of blue-banded gobies.

We had a surface break of about 90 minutes between dives when we filled the cylinders and enjoyed the sun.

Dive 2
Feeling a bit more adventurous we decide to swim out to the wreck of the glass-bottom boat and work our way back through the kelp forest. The wreck was ok but it was a relatively small boat and there wasn’t much to see. The highlight of the first day came however, when we were swimming back through the kelp and came across a giant sea bass
(dt. Kalifornischer Judenfisch) which was bigger than Ingrid (ca. 2 metres). I could judge this pretty accurately as the thing was so tame it was possible for her to swim right up close to the fish, which just stayed there looking at us.
We stayed with the bass for quite a while and then made our way back to the steps.
During this dive we also saw a lobster, a nudibranch (wayhay :-) and a massive shoal of sardines (which the guy told us was called a '‚bait ball’)

After the dive we discovered an excellent German theme pub for the deco-beer which, much to my delight, also served Paulaner.

Visit 2
This time the journey to the ferry was a lot less hectic as firstly we knew the way and secondly we had realized we didn’t need to turn up until 06:00. The extra time in bed really made a difference as we had got up in the middle of the night the day before to go hot air ballooning.
The ferry journey was non-eventful and when we arrived on the island we made our way straight to the equipment hire place at the dive park, which was nice as it meant we didn’t have to cart everything from Scuba Luv.

Dive 3
For this dive we made our way to the buoy outermost point of the park and descended to a depth of ca. 30 metres. We had a quick look at the Sue-Jac wreck and were also able to glimpse the giant sea bass (presumably the same one), which swam buy at a distance.
We then went a bit shallower and found one of the plateaus at a depth of 10m, where we swam slowly back to the steps.
During this dive I had a disposable camera with me (embarrassingly bad photos are below) so was busy trying to snap anything that moved (including Ingrid). We didn’t really see anything out of the ordinary other than a California turbot, although this could also have been a halibut.
I guess we’ll never know ...

When we got back to the surface I was feeling like Hans Hass with my throwaway camera and it was therefore with some awe that I saw the divers who had started getting ready next to us. One guy who I got talking to was Mark Brownton and was in the process of assembling a very expensive and technical looking underwater video camera. We started chatting and he told us that we could get filmed at the start of the next dive and he would send us the film.

Dive 4
This dive started with us being filmed by Mark. He got us to take our masks off and give each other a kiss (we’d mentioned it was our honeymoon) as well as to swim round things and generally try and look halfway to competent. Anyway, it was great fun and he has assured me the film came out well.
The rest of the dive was non descript and we saw a combination of the aforementioned fish.

After the last dive we went again to the German pub and had fish and chips for lunch. That and five Paulaner ...

To sum this report up, I can thoroughly recommend California as a holiday destination. The people are incredibly friendly, the weather is great, the diving is fab and if you get fed up of diving then it’s also dangerously near to Las Vegas.