Morro Bay Outer Breakwater

The Morro Bay Outer Breakwater is the rubble wall that runs 600 yards south from Morro Rock and closes the north side of the harbor entrance. A light on a white column stands 36 feet above the water at its outer end. The dive is the harbor side of that wall toward the seaward end, where NOAA charts 23 feet, and divers who work it know the site as the Outer Break Wall. The wall is rubble rather than a smooth face, and big lingcod are among what the gaps in it hold.

Broken rubble rock stacked from the bottom to above the waterline, with open gaps and ledges through it, is a rocky reef biome. The water on the harbor side of the wall is Morro Bay water, moved by tidal exchange through the entrance rather than by open swell, which puts a bay biome over the structure.

Spearfishing and scuba are the activities, and neither is casual at this site. Currents through the entrance channel and around the breakwaters run strong at times, the sandbars at the entrance can throw very large waves, and sections of the wall's south end go awash under heavy seas and high tides. Access is by boat from Morro Bay Harbor, and the Harbor Department allows scuba and free diving only outside the marked navigation channel and asks divers to stay within 100 feet of a dive flag. A settled day and a slack tide are the conditions that make the site work.

The dive sits inside the Morro Bay State Marine Recreational Management Area, which prohibits take of all living marine resources except waterfowl and, north of latitude 35° 19.7' N, recreational finfish. The site is north of that line, so hook-and-line fishing and spearfishing for finfish are legal here under standard California regulations, and no invertebrates may be taken.