Shore diving discussion

[Pinkpadigal]

Over the last year I have been a member here, I have read a lot of stories about problems with shore diving in our area. While some of the problems are natural-occuring (tides, vis, currents), so many are man-made problems. They included:

1. Dangerous parking lots (thefts, gangs, etc)
2. Lack of parking
3. Lack of safe access from cars to water
4. Pay-to-park lots.
5. Property owners who hate divers
6. Lack of public facilities available (fresh water and restrooms)
7. Lack of close driving access at all (only available by boat)
8. Competition in the water (fishermen, water taxis, boats etc)

As more and more people want access to the water, it seems we are losing access and having to deal with more problems with cranky property owners, cranky divers and favorite places becoming too crowded with divers and others.

WSA is working to get more public shore access available to us but that could be years away. So, here is the discussion and this may be dreaming a bit but, if you could change the "man-made" problems about your favorite dive site, what would it be? Where?

[LCF]

Maybe I'm polyanna-ish, but I haven't run into any problems shore diving over the last two years, except a shortage of parking on occasion. I don't mind paying for parking, especially at a site where there are restrooms and water, since somebody has to pay the utility bills.

I guess the thing that would be nice would be to have porta-potties at some of the dive sites that are just the ends of roads, like Three Tree or Fox Island or Day Island wall. I wonder if that would do a lot to improve relationships with land owners, too? Immersion diuresis no doubt leads to some diver behavior that landowners don't appreciate . . .

[Grateful Diver]

I would happily pay to park, if it meant reasonable access to a site and some sort of restroom facility.

Some of these issues, divers bring on themselves. There are dive sites ... Day Island Wall, for example ... that just shouldn't be considered appropriate for large groups. Short of purchasing some property and turning it into a public facility, the place just won't accommodate the kind of traffic it can attract on a ideal tides day. I've seen shops and dive clubs show up with 30-40 divers ... and no matter how you handle it or how much you try to be considerate, that's just too many people to have descend into a residential neighborhood with limited parking access.

In an ideal world, we'd police ourselves, and put limits on the size of the groups that use the sites in residential areas ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

[LCF]

Maybe that's something the proposed calendar here could be good for? We could go and check to see how many people were already planning to be at sites like Day Island Wall. Of course, it would be voluntary, and first-come-first-served, but it might help if everybody knew who was planning on being somewhere.

[CaptnJack]

1) Get the Seattle Transportation/Metro to move their ferry terminal out of the public park at Seacrest. Will probably take a mayoral election though.

2) All the big clubs post their dive calenders on their respective websites. WSA could setup a clearinghouse for those calenders. (Although what the clubs should really do is limit their numbers.)

[RSdancey]

So, here is the discussion and this may be dreaming a bit but, if you could change the "man-made" problems about your favorite dive site, what would it be? Where?

1) Sani-can facility at Octopus Hole, Three Tree & Day Island

2) Stairs or Ramp at Sunrise & Day Island (i.e. remove dirt path access)

3) Improved access (i.e. safer) to the water at 100 Foot Rock and Octopus Hole

4) Floodlight on the street at Octopus Hole that lit parking area & water access

Ryan

[RSdancey]

Maybe that's something the proposed calendar here could be good for?

I built an entire web-based software solution for scheduling events (and reporting results) for OrganizedPlay, the startup I founded after I left Wizards of the Coast. That software could be easily repurposed to serve as a centralized dive planning tool. It is all based on SOAP web services, which means that 3rd parties could easily add functionality to their own web sites to access the calendar, or even schedule events.

If this is something that people seriously think would be used, I'd be happy to donate some time to implement it.

Ryan

[Sea of Green]

Over the last year I have been a member here, I have read a lot of stories about problems with shore diving in our area. While some of the problems are natural-occuring (tides, vis, currents), so many are man-made problems. They included:

1. Dangerous parking lots (thefts, gangs, etc)
2. Lack of parking
3. Lack of safe access from cars to water
4. Pay-to-park lots.
5. Property owners who hate divers
6. Lack of public facilities available (fresh water and restrooms)
7. Lack of close driving access at all (only available by boat)
8. Competition in the water (fishermen, water taxis, boats etc)

As more and more people want access to the water, it seems we are losing access and having to deal with more problems with cranky property owners, cranky divers and favorite places becoming too crowded with divers and others.

WSA is working to get more public shore access available to us but that could be years away. So, here is the discussion and this may be dreaming a bit but, if you could change the "man-made" problems about your favorite dive site, what would it be? Where?

1. Don't leave anything of value in the vehicle if the area is known for that. I don't know of any one area that has a reputation for that. I've heard of intermittent problems here and there. Take only the gear that you'll be using on the dive, tuck your wallet and/or cash in your undies.

2. Get there early. It's not unusual for me to get to a site like Alki at least 30 minutes before the meet time to get into a holding pattern for a good parking spot.

3. Look both ways before you cross the street. That's especially true of Octopus Hole if you're parked on the opposite side of the road. Personally, I won't do that, I'll throw in with a buddy so we can park on the near side. Even then, I'm very nervous about parking there, with that blind curve and all.

4. Oh, come on now, you're willing to spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on dive gear, but don't want to fork over a couple dollars for parking to go on a mini-adventure and have fun with friends? I would gladly pay to park to dive with you (sorry if that sounds like a flirt, not intended).

5. Bend over backwards to be respectful of neighbors around the site. There's a reason for their hostility, usually based on experience from a few bad apples. But other than Day Island, I don't know of any other site that has that problem.

6. Manage your bodily functions according to the site. Stop somewhere before you get to the site to take care of "business". Don't drink 5 cups of coffee and/or a quart of water just before you leave for the site (hydrate the night before). I bring along three 1-gallon jugs of water in a small cooler to do some clean up at the site.

7. Not sure I get this one. You're not talking about shore diving anymore. Find a buddy with a boat or hire a charter.

8. Tis the season. Summertime and fishing season will bring the boaters and fisherman out. They have just as much right to enjoy the water as divers. There have been times I've shown up at a site only to abandon the dive because of the armada of boats in the area. We simply adjourned to a safer location, sometimes it meant the nearest pub. The water will still be there on your next day off.

[Sea of Green]

... if you could change the "man-made" problems about your favorite dive site, what would it be? Where?

I would buy up the property on either side of Day Island access, tear down one house and turn it into a diver-only parking lot. The other house would be for exclusive use of divers to clean up and "debrief". Same thing with 3-Tree.

Sunrise - Have mules to haul the gear up/down the hill. Those stalls they have there would be perfect shelter for them. The fee would be one apple per diver per mule.

Alki Cove 2 - Kick out that useless water taxi and build another pier for the fisherman somewhere else. No boat access, let them go down the road a couple blocks to the boat ramp.

[Sounder]

I'd buy the house to the North of the DIW entrance and growl at divers as they gear up because I'm grumpy due to my wife working the night shift.

I don't think anybody cares about diving any more than we care about fishing, or the water taxi, or jet skiers, or anyone else who enjoys the water. We can't take the shore line back unless we're willing to pony up the funds to buy water-front property... which isn't going to happen. Even then, we'd still only own to the high-tide line. The parking lot at Cove 2 is NOT for divers, it's for the public. The bathrooms are a bonus for which we should be grateful and the shower is truly a gift we aren't entitled to.

I'm interested to see how WSA tackles this.

[lamont]

buy a bulldozer, knock down anything standing in the way of beach access to whatever spot you want to dive...