East End Pinnacles

East End Pinnacles is a field of offshore rock mounds east of East Point, the easternmost headland of Santa Rosa Island. The mounds have flattish tops and vertical faces cut with crevices, with the inner pinnacles rising from a bottom at forty to eighty feet and the outer pinnacles from fifty to one hundred. Visibility on the site averages about forty feet. Kelp grows on the shallower tops, and lobster hold in the cracks through the pinnacle structure itself.

The pinnacles sit south of the Skunk Point State Marine Reserve, the no-take reserve covering the northeast corner of Santa Rosa, and outside its boundary. The combination of depth, current over the pinnacle tops, and the offshore position makes it an intermediate boat dive.

The set of vertical faces dropping from the kelp tops to the sand floor makes East End Pinnacles a canyon biome. Giant kelp on the shallower tops, anchored on the rock and growing up through the water column to the surface, adds a kelp forest biome. A rocky reef biome runs below the kelp, across the bare rock of the pinnacle flanks. Pelagic species transit the open water around and above the pinnacle tops, a pelagic biome where the structure falls away.

Access is boat only. Charter dive boats run to the East End from Ventura and Santa Barbara as part of multi-day trips to the outer islands.

Fishing and spearfishing are legal here under standard California recreational rules. No MPA covers the East End Pinnacles. The Skunk Point State Marine Reserve sits north of East Point, and the pinnacle field lies south of the reserve boundary in open water.