Possession Point Fingers

Possession Point Fingers lies just off the south end of Whidbey Island in Possession Sound, at the southeast corner of the island and out from the first large dirt bluff past the last house on the shoreline. The site is a boat-only dive. The nearest public launch is the Mukilteo State Park boat ramp about 5 miles to the northeast, and smaller boats can put in at Possession Beach Waterfront Park at the end of Possession Road on Whidbey, with the caveat that its docks are removed in the off-season. Underwater, the feature is a set of expansive sandstone and clay formations oriented vertically, with a shelf above them sloping to about 35 feet and near-vertical walls dropping from there.

The dive site is one of the marquee boat dives in central and south Puget Sound, and Whidbey Island Dive Center out of Freeland runs charter trips to it. Emerald Diving calls it the only place in Puget Sound where divers regularly see 8 species of rockfish on a single dive, all look-only under the state rockfish closure. Giant Pacific octopus and wolf eel are the other typical residents of walls in this depth range.

The rocky reef biome takes hold on the sloping shelf above the fingers and across the sandstone structure itself, where the ledges and shelves give the invertebrates and rockfish their footing. A kelp forest biome grows on the shallower shelf and along the top of the fingers where bull kelp anchors and reaches to the surface. The recreational profile runs from about 70 feet to 110 feet on the fingers themselves, and the walls extend past 130 feet and beyond, so the dive is considered advanced with buoyancy and depth control as the safety-critical skills.

Possession Point catches a persistent southwest-flowing surface current driven by freshwater runoff from the rivers to the north, and that current is present regardless of the tidal phase. The productive dive happens below the freshwater layer, where the subsurface current is minimal, and live-boat operations are the standard call in strong surface flow. There is no marine protected area on the fingers themselves. The site sits inside WDFW Marine Area 9, south of the Possession Point to shipwreck line that separates it from Marine Area 8-2 to the north. Rockfish retention is prohibited across Marine Area 9 and enforced by state closure, and wolf eel and giant Pacific octopus are protected non-take species statewide.