San Juan Islands diving

[ally507]

I visited the San Juan Islands last summer. Wow what a beautiful place to dive and visit. The diving was terrific, if you are used to diving cold water like most of us are living here in Wisconsin. I would say that the water temp was between 55 and 60 degrees in the middle of June with vis at about 30-40 ft. We saw lingcod, wolf eels, white anemonies all over the place, 10-12 armed sea stars, sea cucumbers, and lots of Rockfish. The only thing we didn't see was the octopus, but we could have just swam past them because of their camoflage. The diving was wonderful!! We went diving with island divers at Friday Harbor. They were great to dive with and really took care of you. The trip to and from Friday harbor on the ferry was very interesting and the island was great. I would reccommend taking a car around the island instead of using your money to buy a whale watching tour. We were just driving around the western side of the island and looked over and saw a pod of orcas surfacing. Sure we weren't as close to them as the boat would have been, but we were close enough, and didn't have to spend between 50-75 to go out on the boat. I would also reccommend the the San Juan Island Brewery to eat as they had the best fish and chips ever. The whale museam on the island is also a great place to learn more about orcas. Overall a great place to visit and dive from!!

[jasondbaker]

Thanks for the review.  I looked up the location of the San Juan islands to find they are in Washington state.

[Omicron]

Sounds like a neat time - a dive trip out to the west coast is something I definitely want to do one of these years.

[schultz]

My wife and I just did a little three day dive trip to the San Juan Islands this past February - it was money well spent if you like to see LARGE invertebrates and colorful rock faces. I highly recommend going there, but December - April are probably the best times since algae blooms proliferate the Puget Sound area during the warmer months. We went out to the Hood Canal area for a few dives April of 2004, and the vis was about 10 feet in places.

If anyone is interested, I've done some write-ups on the trip here:





With photos of the diving in the gallery located here:


Since Ally didn't get to see any octopus, I've attached a photo of a 'little' specimen (only about 6 feet long).

[ethanb]

I highly recommend the San Juan Islands as well.  I went twice in 2000 with "Emerald Seas" dive charter, which I believe was bought by Island Dive.  They seem to be an excellent operation.  A weekend in Friday Harbor is an excellent aside if you're ever in Seattle.  They're plenty to see above and below the water.  I'll see if I can dig up some of my photos as well.

Ethan

[dfreeman]

I got to dive in the Vancouver area and really enjoyed it.  This looks just as nice.

A must do dive and it is even within the USA.

So little time, so much diving.

Doug