Giant kelp growing from 20m to the surface in water clear enough to see the canopy from the steps, with garibaldi, kelp bass…Giant kelp growing from 20m to the surface in water clear enough to see the canopy from the steps, with garibaldi, kelp bass, sheephead and horn sharks underneath it. The park is a no-boat zone marked with buoys, so the fish are unbothered and a snorkeller can drift the edge of the forest in a few metres. Set aside in 1962 next to the Casino building as the first municipal underwater park on the American west coast, at a time when the sport was young enough that a city reserving water for divers was novel. It has been a training site for generations of southern Californian divers since. Anchorage: No anchoring in the dive park. Take an Avalon mooring and come in by shore boat or dinghy; the whole of Avalon Bay is mooring-only. Hazards: Boat traffic outside the marked park, and kelp that can tangle a careless fin. The park itself is closed to boats, which is the point of it. More