Coral Reef (Anacapa)

Coral Reef lies on the seaward side of the west end of West Anacapa Island, a set of two or three rocky reefs running parallel to the island in twenty-five to ninety feet of water. The name comes from the dive community rather than from any hard coral. The reef has no tropical coral at all and is instead carpeted with encrusting anemones and sponges in lavender, yellow, pink, and orange, plus a famous brittle-star carpet between sixty and eighty feet that is the deepest section of the site. The dense invertebrate cover and the brittle-star carpet make it one of the most photographed dive sites in the park.

The reef sits in open water about half a mile off the south face of West Anacapa, where the island ends in a steep cliff. The inner reefs come up to twenty-five or thirty feet at their tops, the outer reef sits deeper at fifty-five to ninety, and current runs over the structure on most tide changes. The current is what feeds the dense invertebrate cover, and it is also what makes the dive intermediate rather than beginner. Most divers descend and ascend the anchor line rather than free-swimming back against the current.

The rock of the reef, carpeted with brittle stars, anemones, and sponges across the deeper sections, makes Coral Reef a rocky reef biome. Bull kelp and giant kelp anchored on the shallower reef tops at twenty-five to thirty feet, growing up through the water column to the surface, add a kelp forest biome where the kelp holds.

Access is boat only. Charter boats run to Coral Reef from Ventura, Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard, and Santa Barbara Harbor. The crossing is about an hour and a half from Ventura, and the back side of West Anacapa is the last leg of the run. The dive site is exposed to swell from the south and southwest, and the strong current means slack tide is the only reliable window.

Fishing is legal under the rules of the Anacapa Island State Marine Conservation Area, which covers the reef. Within the SMCA, recreational take is allowed only for California spiny lobster and listed pelagic finfish such as yellowtail, bonito, tuna, and pelagic sharks. All other take is prohibited, which means rockfish, sheephead, kelp bass, and bottom-fish spearing are not legal here. The boundary between the SMCA and the no-take Anacapa Island State Marine Reserve runs north-south at 119°24.6′ W, just east of the dive site, and the SMCA's southern edge is close enough that the position should be chartplotted before harvesting.

Channels is a shallower wide-angle area just east along the same West Anacapa reef, where harbor seals are common in the kelp tunnels in about twenty feet of water. Underwater Island, a deeper submerged rocky mound nearby, is the macro counterpart to the Channels' wide-angle scenery. Both sites lie along the same West Anacapa reef as Coral Reef, inside the Anacapa Island State Marine Conservation Area, so the same limited-take rules described above apply.

Rat Rock is the western tip of West Anacapa, where the reef ends in stair-step ledges that drop past recreational scuba depth. The site is advanced, worked on slack current because of the position at the end of the island, and forms the western anchor of the same West Anacapa reef that Coral Reef and Channels lie along, under the same Anacapa Island SMCA rules.