Bee Rock

Bee Rock is a pair of low rocks just off the southwest quarter of Santa Rosa Island, the larger pinnacle about five feet above the water and the smaller about ten. The pair sit clear of the island by several hundred yards and the rock structure drops steeply on all sides, with the walls falling from the surface to sixty feet or more. The site is remote, rarely crowded, and known for its invertebrate life rather than for big fish, with dense growth on the deeper walls and ledges.

The site is at its best in late autumn and early winter, when the wind shifts to settled offshore patterns and the visibility opens to forty or fifty feet. The position on the southwest face of Santa Rosa puts Bee Rock in the lee of the northwest weather most of the year, but a southwest swell closes the site when it builds. Charter boats schedule Bee Rock as a calm-day pick, often after a morning dive at Talcott Shoal further north on the island.

The exposed rock structure of the two pinnacles, with steep walls and the cracks, ledges, and overhangs that hold the macro life, makes Bee Rock a rocky reef biome. The canyon biome is the vertical relief from the rocks above water to the sixty-foot floor on either side, the walls dropping through the full water column. Giant kelp anchored on the shallower shoulder of the structure and growing up through the water column to the surface adds a kelp forest biome. Around the rocks, the open water makes a pelagic biome where the bottom drops away and larger pelagic species transit through.

Access is boat only. Charter dive boats run to Bee Rock from Santa Barbara and Ventura, with the crossing from Santa Barbara about three hours. The site is on the southwest face of the island and is exposed to swell from the south, southwest, and west. The dive turns surgy quickly on a building day, and the position out from the island gives no shelter from any direction once the weather comes up.

Fishing and spearfishing are legal here under standard California recreational rules. No MPA covers Bee Rock. The South Point State Marine Reserve sits east of the site, with its western boundary at 120°10.0′ W, a little over two nautical miles east of the rocks at 120°12.8′ W. The reserve covers the south point of Santa Rosa and the Johnsons Lee area further east, so divers running back toward the island should chartplot before harvesting.