Washington Park

Washington Park occupies a 220-acre peninsula at the west end of Fidalgo Island, immediately outside Anacortes. The dive enters from the west or north side of the park's 2.2-mile paved loop road, where the shoreline drops through a cove into the current-swept waters of Burrows Pass, the channel between Fidalgo and Burrows islands. Underwater, the profile is a fringing reef and eelgrass flat rather than a wall. Divers report typical depths reached around 35 feet, with silty eelgrass on the cove side and ribbon bull kelp growing along the rocky side. The shoreline continues to deeper water toward Burrows Pass, but the recreational dive keeps to the shallower fringe.

The park is city land in Anacortes, set aside in the early 20th century and expanded across the decades since. Green Point on the northwest tip of the loop is an interpretive site on the Whale Trail, referenced for surface sightings of harbor porpoise and harbor seals from the paved road. For divers, the site's reputation is anchored in nudibranchs: multiple dive-community sources call out an assortment of nudibranchs at good size and condition, and the cove has established itself as a photography destination for that reason.

The rocky reef biome runs along the harder shoreline where the bull kelp anchors, hosting the dense invertebrate community the site is known for. A kelp forest biome grows on that same rock where the bull kelp reaches from its holdfasts to the surface. The seagrass biome sits on the softer bottom inside the cove, where the eelgrass supports the estuarine assemblage divers hunt with a camera rather than a spear. Scuba divers and snorkelers both work the shallows, and photographers dominate the traffic.

The 220-acre park keeps a boat launch, campground, and paved loop road, with pedestrian hours from 6 a.m. to dusk and vehicle hours from 10 a.m. to dusk. Boat-launch parking is $14 a day. No Discover Pass is required because the site is a city park rather than a state park, and Anacortes Diving in town is the local air-fills source. Rockfish retention is prohibited throughout WDFW Marine Area 7 and enforced by state closure, and wolf eel and giant Pacific octopus are protected non-take species statewide.