Esquinalt Lagoon

Heading down the hill and over the lagoon bridge, this sign will point you into the lagoon area. You'll actually want the beach just to the left. A sandy entry makes this very easy for beginners. For any non-divers, this is a neat stretch of beach to comb!

My dive buddy and I stopped in a bit late in the afternoon December 11th, 2014. We arrived about 15:50 hrs and were suited up and diving by 16:32. Our plan was to catch a few crabs for dinner. There were tons of dungenous crabs here. We used the chase 'em, scoop 'em, and bag 'em method. It worked well to my surprise and we caught 4 eaters in 21 minutes. Unfortunately, I lost sight of Talis in the 15 ft visibility and we surfaced. By this time it was dark. The shore lights along the road made it easy to swim back in the right direction to shore.

If you take the time to look there is a multitude of small life here . The crabs ... a bonus.

There is no real reason to do this dive unless you're after crab, but it is a great place to go crabbing. Here the issue isn't finding legal-sized crabs, rather it's finding ones small enough to fit in your crab bag! Aside from that there isn't much too see. The bottom is sandy, so this may be a good area for practice diving. A lot of boaters come in close to shore here (to crab and fish), so a flag is a good idea.

A very shallow dive. You can swim out almost 600 meters and it's still under 20 feet. A great place to go crabbing as the king crabs are huge here. Found some sand dollars and skates here. Time it for slack tide as you could get swept out.

Flat sand bottom. Shrimp, lots of Dungeness crabs. Had to swim out on the surface for about 20 minutes to reach 40 foot depths, but easy beach access. If you're after crabs, great, but not much else to see.