Diving Catalina Island Rock Quarry & Eagle Rock With The Pacific Star Dive Boat

After spending Saturday out on the rocks in Chatsworth running the Sierra Club Advanced Mountaineering Program I had one of those quasi rare "free" days.  And what better way to spend it than to run out and try another dive boat!

So Jen, our friend Neal, and myself bought tickets on the Pacific Star and we were off to Catalina!


The AMP classes tend to be really early mornings and take a lot out of me to it was only slightly painful to wake up at an ungodly hour and drive out to San Pedro


The Pacific Star is located at 22 Street Landing which is where the Bottom Scratcher, Asate, Magician and a few other dive boats also dock.

As is customary with the day excursion dive boats out here breakfast, lunch, and snacks are all included in the $130 3 tank dive ticket so all we had to do was show up with our diving gear.

The boat left at 7:00 am and breakfast was a customizable breakfast burrito and a copious amount of coffee.


One very nice feature of the Pacific Star is that the back deck doesn't have a center island so it feels a lot more spacious than some of the other boats I've been on.


By 9:30 am we were moored off the shore of the Rock Quarry and eagerly tossed ourselves off the boat.

I've been spending a fair amount of time diving off Laguna Beach and I've been having a blast and learning a ton.  However conditions are most often something like this:


Not the best but hey, any day underwater!  But then you get out to Catalina and all of a sudden it looks like this:


And I suddenly wonder why I don't just get a second job and spend all of my time out here on dive boats.

We had a good 40-50 ft of visibility until the very end of dive #2.  The water was a bit chilly but I was also diving without a hood so take that for what you will.



Rock Quarry has quickly become my favorite dive spot out in Catalina.  There's kelp, it gets deep if you want it and there's always a lot of life.







Lunch was a functional meatloaf, potatoes, and green beans but everything was hot and the portions were suitably large.


After two dives at Rock Quarry the boat relocated to Eagle Rock while we huddled in our layers and tried to warm up as well as we could.

I was on a high after the Rock Quarry dives but Eagle Rock was a bit of a letdown.  We had a moderately strong current which meant we had to stay low and try and shield behind rocks and there wasn't any of the kelp that makes diving in Catalina so memorable.




Still, a dive is a dive and we saw plenty of critters down amongst the rock including an octopus which is always a big treat for me.




60 or so minutes later we came back up under the swimstep, peeled off our gear, and relaxed on the top deck with some ice cream and a brownie as the boat made its way back to San Pedro.


And as an added bonus we even got to see a few whales along the way!