Painted Cave

Painted Cave is the largest sea cave in California and one of the largest sea caves in the world, cut into the northwest cliffs of Santa Cruz Island. The entrance sits in about thirty feet of water, reaches almost a hundred feet wide, and arches a hundred and sixty feet from the surface to the ceiling. A large boat can enter the mouth with room to spare. The cave runs back into the island for twelve hundred and twenty-seven feet, more than the length of four football fields, narrowing as it goes. The name comes from the colors at the entrance, where different rock types, lichens, and algae paint the volcanic walls in red, orange, green, and gray.

The dive site is the cave entrance and the walls of the headland around it, not the back of the cave. The deeper sections are dangerous in surge and have no light, and the dive community treats Painted Cave as a wide-angle cavern-and-wall dive rather than a true cave dive. Sea lions and harbor seals are commonly present at the entrance. Visibility is typically thirty to fifty feet in calm conditions and drops when swell brings surge into the structure.

The bare rock of the headland around the cave entrance, with reef structure between the kelp patches outside the mouth, makes Painted Cave a rocky reef biome. The canyon biome is the defining feature here, the vertical relief of the cave itself with its hundred-and-sixty-foot ceiling and the long passage running back into the cliff. Giant kelp anchored on the reef just outside the entrance and growing up through the water column to the surface adds a kelp forest biome.

Access is boat only. Charter dive boats and kayak tours both run to Painted Cave from Ventura, Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard, and Santa Barbara Harbor. The crossing is about two hours from Ventura, and the northwest end of Santa Cruz adds another half hour around the coast. The site sits exposed on the northwest face of the island, and surge inside the structure builds quickly on any westerly swell. The safe window is a settled morning with low long-period swell.

Fishing is legal within the Painted Cave State Marine Conservation Area for California spiny lobster and listed pelagic finfish such as yellowtail, bonito, tuna, and pelagic sharks. All other take is prohibited inside the SMCA, including rockfish, sheephead, kelp bass, and bottom-fish spearing. The boundary box runs from 34°04.0′ N to 34°05.2′ N and 119°51.0′ W to 119°53.0′ W. Divers harvesting at the edge of the boundary should chartplot the position before fishing.