Heisler Park

I broke my spear gun and decided that I should just snorkel around this reserve for the afternoon. I dove at the very south end of the park near where the 133 dead ends into the 1. The start of the dive was pretty uneventful. Despite calm conditions it was really murky. Eventually I figured out that the place to be was on the inside of a small chain of rocks 100 to 200 feet out. The largest of these shows up on satellite image as being the largest rock in the reserve which makes the location easy to return to. These rocks helped block the waves which improved visibility. The place was crawling with small sharks. I saw at least twenty leopard sharks, a horn shark, and a shovelnose shark. They were all pretty small, three feet being typical. Still, I saw more sharks there than in all my other diving combined. There also was some other impressive marine life. The cracks in the rocks are full of sea urchins, lobster and even a few large abalone. Additionally I saw a baby halibut and a large number of perch and kelp bass. The water was shallow. I never hit water deeper than about twenty feet, although I did not go out all that far. All the sharks I saw were in only eight or ten feet of water. Therefore this is a better place to snorkel than scuba dive, although on a calm day it would make a reasonable beginner scuba site.