Diver Reviews:    (Please share your own experiences by clicking here!)

09/12/2009 Nate from Citrus Heights (Avg: 4.85 Review) - We hit the Scuba lottery! 8/27/09 was a day to remember. FLAT OCEAN, no surge, no wind, sunny all day and when we swam out and could see the bottom clearly from the top, we thought it was high viz. Maybe even 30'+ then we dropped down to the bottom we were looking at and found it was over 50'+. The amount of life is so dense that you can NOT find a square yard that doesn't have every color of the rainbow, all shapes of stars, urchins, anemones, nudibranchs (saw a Spanish dancer!), goathead fish, wolf eels, pyramid snails as big as a baseball, harbor seals, leopard sharks (4' and 3') sleeping on the bottom. We dove at Middle Reef and Beto's reef on two separate dives. Second dive the waves climbed to a drastic 1' at 30 seconds, and the viz reduced to 40'+. This place is sacred! Two days later the viz was down to 8' and a friend said the sea nettles were so thick from -15' to 25' that they called a dive off due to stings on the face (only place not covered in a wet suit). One word of advice, Get outside the cove to see what you came there for.

08/07/2009 Erich (Avg: 2.70 Review) - The comment about this park not allowing snorkeling is false. I snorkeled with a buddy four times here in July and August of 2009. This may be a great scuba site but it is not a great snorkeling site. Within the cove the water was often murky and the sea life was close to non existent. Outside the cove the visibility opens up but the depth keeps things of interest out of sight for snorkelers. This is the only dive sight I visited in California and it did not live up to the hype I heard about when asking for a good snorkel site. Maybe I am just spoiled from all my Caribbean diving.

04/15/2009 Scuba Diver Girl Stephanie (Avg: 4.65 Review) - April 10, 2009 Love this place! The dive was very easy. I had never dove here before. We suited up at Whalers cove and headed out. Very easy to navigate this place. The sea life is amazing: harbor seals, sea anemones, rock fish, kelp fish, eels, etc... And the visibility and kelp are Amazing! Important to remember: the park only allows 30 divers a day, reserve early, bring your cert card, and have a buddy, no solos here. And, think warm! We dove 7mm with lots of layers and got one dive in; it was 52 degrees, but so worth it. Brrrr. Friends we met up there dove dry suits, and got one dive in; an up welling of cold from the trench brought more cold water in from the deep. We only saw 1/8 of what is to be seen. A definitely must to dive again!

12/02/2007 Anonymous (Avg: 4.45 Review) - Lovely. No taking anything here means lots of big fish. Some algae usually seen only farther south (Eisenia arborea). Lots of coralline algae and invertebrates. Fairly well protected in Winter from swell if you don't mind a bit of surge.

01/21/2006 Dan Bermingham (Avg: 4.92 Review) - Point Lobos is arguably one of the nicest dives in California, if not the US. I'd say roughly half of my dives there had a sea lion or harbor seal "buddy," often nipping at your fin or zooming around you. Just keep your eyes open and you'll often spot them at the edge of visibility. Bluefish cove (the next cove over) often has even better visibility and a cool little swim-through near Guillemot Rock. Some spots further out have plenty of hydrocoral and encrusting sponges. Fabulous. Pros: Great vis, great amount of sea life, easy entry on the boat ramp. Only 15 teams of divers allowed. Plenty of hiking trails and photo spots if the surf is too big to dive. Cons: Reservations are required and fill up fast for weekends. Some of the best dive spots are LONG surface swims (or bring an inflatable, kayak, or set of doubles and a scooter). Watch your step on the boat ramp though, as it does get algae growth that makes it slippery.

09/13/2004 Linda Sonne (Avg: 4.11 Review) - A must-do site for the Monterey Bay area. The kelp forests here are beautiful, and we regularly get accompaniment from sea lions or harbor seals. Beautiful and colorful sea anemones and other marine life. Visibility tends to be quite good for Monterey/Carmel - often over 50 feet.

10/17/2003 Avid Diver (Avg: 4.85 Review) - One of the best shore dives in California if not the best and better than many boat dives. Mid week dive spots almost never fill up. "Drop-in" divers first thing in the morning can usually get in without a reservation . Two boats do dives here mid week and take divers to the outer reefs too far to swim to. The outer reefs are some of the best dive sites in the world! Cypress Sea and Beach Hopper II are the boats that go here mid week. They often have to cancel due to too few divers signed up. Perhaps if the word gets out about them more people will sign up and I can go more often!

06/14/2003 Greg Bawdon (Avg: 4.52 Review) - Though it has been some time since I dove here, I remember one day especially. I dove here on a few days that were not ideal. Being young and crazy, we even surface swam around to the next cove! Between crashing breakers 10' high, through clinging surface foam, watching for bus-sized boulders slamming up as the surge dropped us down on them. Different landscape than Whaler's. Rough, interesting, exhausting without an inflatable! But this one day... no surge, no wind. The water still and flat across the cove as if confined in a bowl. I got down to 30', looked back and saw the sunlight slanting through the water, the kelp; like angels descending from heaven. The kelp stood straight up to the surface, motionless, backlit by the sun; a beautiful, wet, glowing forest. I floated weightless in an alien world. That image I will remember forever. Gave me goose bumps. Or was that the 45 degree water leaking through my neck seal? Like any dive site, Whaler's has good, bad days. Dive it more than once! Really good dives here can rip you out of your mundane life, immerse you in a world exotic and beautiful. You will, for a while, forget the rusty old pickup waiting on shore.

03/09/2003 Anonymous (Avg: 4.40 Review) - This is one of the best all-around cold water shore dives I've ever done. I've made four dives there and could spend years poking around the place. The only downside is you have to secure a reservation for diving through the California Parks http://pt-lobos.parks.state.ca.us/scuba.

02/15/2003 Mike Dill (Avg: 3.85 Review) - Excellent diving year round. You either need to swim out four hundred yards or more, or have a boat to experience the better locations. The park does not allow snorkeling, and limits the number of divers, so you need to get a reservation at http://pt-lobos.parks.state.ca.us/scuba/ where there is also a lot of information. You can see some of the more advanced dive sites at http://www.baue.org/projects/lobos/index.html

11/22/2002 Mike Ward (Avg: 3.77 Review) - I have logged about 100 dives in and around Carmel/Monterey. My dive at Point Lobos was the best of any of those. But some of it was luck. Conditions were EXCELLENT and I'm sure the diving was great all up the coast. To get out to the good diving at Point Lobos requires a bit of a surface swim, but is worth the extra effort. Visibility here often exceeds other local sites. On this day we could clearly see the bottom 75 feet below. Vis estimates were above 100 ft. The kelp and fish-life is amazing. The reef is also spectacular with some HUGE rocks that anchor the kelp. Lots of life. By far the best five I've ever had in Northern California, and that was in spite of a leaky dry suit that left me a bit cold.

06/28/2002 Tom (Avg: 4.13 Review) - I heard and seen pix that this dive is a lot more enjoyable than when I went. The bad thing was that the Vis from the surface to about thirty feet was like pea soup vis. About 2 1/2-3 feet after thirty feet it opened up to about 15 ft. It was very dark. Because of the Kelp we went down to 65 ft. where it was a cold 45F with lots of fish and plant life. This Dive was done on June 22nd. I haven't given up on Point Lobos and I can't wait to have a good dive, and that will probably happen in the Winter. All in All it was a good Dive.

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Diver Averages for  Whalers Cove (Point Lobos)  (1=worst, 5=best)