SUMMARY: Not the best shore dive around, but worth a try. LOCATION:On Dallas Road near Beacon Hill Park. It's the point of land jutting out into the strait with a big parking lot on it. Enter at the boat ramp near the building and swim out towards the point. WHAT TO SEE: There is a reef sloping down that meets sand at around 20 feet near the ramp. Near the end of the point, the reef continues down to at least 60 feet if you swim out far enough. This reef is not continuous, but has small areas of sand in between. Near the South-East corner, you can see huge sacks of (I'm assuming) dried concrete. These probably cover a sewer pipe that is in the area. In parts of the sandy areas, there are some impressive eel-grass beds in Spring and Summer. Some of them are covered with brooding anemones. In these same sandy areas there are moon snails and lots of hermit crabs. The only way you will see anything on the reefs is if you go in winter. Otherwise, there is a very thick kelp bed that covers the rocks. Fish-eating anemones, urchins, lingcod, rockfish, etc. live on the reef. According to a local guide book and other web sites, there is supposed to be a field of sea pens in the sand near the reef. I have spent several dives looking for them. I have gone all the way around the point and out as far as 50-60 feet deep in all directions, but I haven't seen even one sea pen, never mind "fields of thousands" of them. At this point I'm going to regard them as a myth. If you have seen them, send me an e-mail and tell me I'm crazy. To sum up, except for the eel-grass beds and the alleged sea pens, there really isn't anything here that you can't see more of at nearby Ogden Point. CONDITIONS: Current can be a problem here if you don't dive on slack. Even then it can be unpredictable. I dove here one time at slack and the current was almost too strong to swim against even near the boat ramp. The current is even stronger off the point. If you swim out past the point and the current picks up, you will have a long surface swim ahead of you (In a busy marine traffic area none the less). The local whale watching fleet zips by pretty close to the point. There is a very thick bull kelp forest in summer. It's almost impossible to swim through it without getting snagged. I try to stay on the sand or near the outer edge of the kelp. I've never seen visibility better than 20 feet here, but maybe that's bad luck. Waves can really hammer Clover Point on windy days. It might not kill you, but you will have quite a time trying to get out of the water.
By the way, there is now officially a "field of sea pens" here. I found it off the South-East point in the sand off the rocks. The sea pens are around 1-2 inches tall (just babies). They weren't here a couple of years ago so they must have popped up since then. I did see 2 adults (1 foot tall) a bit farther out. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for them to develop into adults.
