Yellow Banks + Smugglers Cove
Santa Cruz Island · Channel Islands National Park · California
Visibility Breakdown
Visibility by position
Solid = diver report · outlined = today's forecast
Post Break: The range past where any waves are forming, where the water starts to have a significant increase in visibility. There might be some sediment here, but swell energy is diffused and the water is calmer.
Open Water: This zone is far out enough from the shore that the water is at its clearest. It’s deep enough that sediment is not disturbed by the wave energy at the surface. Haze can sit near the surface, so the water is usually clearer the deeper you go.
Through the day
Today's visibility readings at this spot, shown at the hour each one was taken.
Every bar is a reading for the Post Break zone.
This chart shows measured diver reports only.
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Coastal Bulletin
About Yellow Banks + Smugglers Cove
Why it reads 39 ft
Today's forecast runs
The clarity holds through the day, with a light afternoon onshore the only disturbance to the entry shallows.
High confidence
7-Day Forecast
Today is the live headline above. Tomorrow onward is the algorithm's forecast from predicted swell, wind, and rain, updated each morning and at 6 PM Pacific.
Map and parking
Channel Islands National Park · California
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See the offshore water on Pelagiscape →Clarity, temperature breaks and kelp off this beach.
About Yellow Banks + Smugglers Cove
Yellow Banks and Smugglers Cove sit side by side on the southeast side of Santa Cruz Island, about half a mile apart, southeast of the no-take Scorpion State Marine Reserve. Yellow Banks takes its name from the yellow sandstone cliffs above the water that show as bright bands when the late afternoon sun hits them. The dive area is a large stretch of kelp and reef running south from the anchorage along the back side of the island, with depths from twenty feet on the shallow reef tops to eighty in the sand channels between structures. Charter boats use the anchorage as their last stop on a back-side run before heading home, and Ventura spearfishers know it as one of the few legal-take dives close to the Scorpion SMR.
Biomes here
Species found here
Researched habitat and range candidates. A listed species may be seasonal or depth-limited; this is not a confirmed sighting at this location.
Spot strategies
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