Naples Reef

Naples Reef sits about three quarters of a mile off the Gaviota Coast in Santa Barbara County, fronting the Sandpiper Golf Course and the Ritz-Carlton Bacara stretch. It is a submerged reef complex rather than a beach, with no shore dive available. Charter boats out of Santa Barbara Harbor run the trip, and weekend slots fill quickly.

The reef itself is the draw. Vertical rock faces rise about 30 feet off the sand bottom, covered in strawberry anemones that turn the rock pink and red under a dive light. The structure breaks up into pinnacles, arches, and ledges across the site, and a giant kelp forest grows on top of the reef plateau, which puts vertical relief and canopy cover in the same dive.

Naples Reef carries three biomes. The pinnacles, vertical faces, and arches give it the canyon biome, since canyon covers any sharp vertical structure with real depth change. The anemone-covered rock itself, bare of kelp on the vertical sections, is a rocky reef biome. On top of the reef plateau, the canopy makes the same site a kelp forest biome, where giant kelp anchors at the rim of the structure and grows up through the water column to the surface.

Take is prohibited within the Naples State Marine Conservation Area, a 2.58-square-mile limited-take MPA designated in 2012, with two exceptions. Recreational take of pelagic finfish, including Pacific bonito, white seabass, yellowtail, and barracuda, is permitted by spear or by rod and reel, and commercial hand-harvest of giant kelp is permitted. Access is boat-only.