Casino Point Dive Park
Avalon · Catalina Island · California
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Updated 6:00 AM PT todayThe clarity holds through the day, with a light afternoon onshore the only disturbance to the entry shallows.
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33.351° N · 118.326° W
Avalon, CA 90704
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Open in Apple MapsAbout Casino Point Dive Park
Casino Point Dive Park is the dive site that built recreational scuba in California. Designed in 1962 and opened in 1965, it was the first nonprofit underwater park in the country and one of the sites Jacques Cousteau put on the map. The park sits against the seawall at the base of the Catalina Casino. A stair entry leads down from a flat staging area where divers gear up, and buoy lines mark the boundary of the dive park out across the cove.
Inside the buoys, a dense giant kelp canopy covers the rocky shelf, anchored to the rock at about 25 feet of depth and grown up through the water column to the surface. Several underwater structures sit on the boulder bottom beneath the canopy at varying depths, including a plaque to Jacques Cousteau, a glass-bottom boat, two small sailboats, and a metal dive platform. Decades on the bottom have weathered them and built reef structure over them. The park has been a protected zone for sixty years, since 1965 as a marine preserve and since 2012 as a state-designated SMCA, and the long protection is part of why the marine life inside the buoys is so dense. Visibility regularly runs 40 to 100 feet, the best of any shore dive in California, and the geography of Avalon Bay shelters the entry from open-coast surge.
The kelp canopy spanning the dive park makes Casino Point Dive Park a kelp forest biome. The wrecks and the boulder bottom sit under the canopy as part of the same continuous shelf.
There is no vehicle parking at the entry. The park is reached on foot, a quarter mile from the Avalon ferry terminal around the seaward side of the casino. The site has a stair entry, a gear staging area, rinse showers, and picnic tables. Catalina Divers Supply runs an air fill and rental trailer at the park during the dive season. Take is prohibited within Casino Point SMCA, which covers the dive park inside the buoy lines; no fishing of any kind is permitted, including rod-and-reel. Avalon Ordinance 303 also prohibits spearfishing across the entire stretch of city waters from Casino Point through Hamilton Cove.
Kelp Forest
The kelp forest biome is giant kelp anchored to rocky bottom and growing up through the water column. The canopy and stipes form a three-dimensional habitat that shelters fish, invertebrates, and the predators that hunt them. Learn more about this biome and the species found in it by clicking the link below.
Learn more in the Biome GlossaryMarine Life
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