SEACREST:

Directions: From I-5 take west Seattle exit, after crossing West Seattle bridge, take the Harbor Ave. exit, take a right onto Harbor Ave, follow until you pass Salty's on Alki on right, the fishing pier parking lot will be on your right.

Seacrest is an extremely popular dive spot for the Seattle area diver. Especially known for its night diving, It is one of the few dive spots that never seems repetitive. At 7:00 PM on a crisp December evening, I pulled my Truck into the parking lot at Seacrest Boathouse. I'm facing Southeast as I park. I look up and out my driver's side window I view the breathtaking skyline shining at me over the calm waters of the Puget Sound. As a Seattle native one would think that this scenery would lose its charm, however I'm here to tell you that after 26 years it still takes my breath away.

After a few minutes of gabbing with my dive buddy we start gearing up and soon head to the beach. My buddy and I do our routine buddy checks and walk into the water. Wearing a dry suit I don't notice much of a temperature change until the water hits my neck. My computer reads 47 Dg. F. The water is a pleasant reminder that, yes it is the Puget Sound I'm about to descend into. We cover the 40 yards of surface swim on a bearing of 030, I look up and see the incredible Seattle lights rising like a shrine out of the water, I can almost reach out and touch them.

A night dive at Seacrest is a little like stepping into a familiar antique store. You know where to look for your favorite attractions, but when you get there you see that someone has added something new on the shelf right next to your favorite item. Winter time offers the best visibility that Puget Sound has to offer: about 30 even 35 feet tonight. I pass several concrete blocks teeming with shrimp and red rock crabs that pretend not to notice my intrusion into their private life. As I maintain my heading of 030 I see a favorite hangout spot on my right. A fairly good SIZE boat about 25 feet long sits with its bow pointing toward shore in about 40 feet of water. It almost always proves to hide a Cabazon nervously poking about.

Another favorite spot is an overturned, half- buried dinghy that rests comfortably in about 100 feet of water. I like it there for two reasons. First and foremost is the almost guaranteed presence of either an octopus or a giant ling cod. This place seems to be the underwater penthouse: whoever is the biggest or the toughest seems to get the space. I have seen ling cod under this boat that is almost longer than the boat itself!. The second is in 100 feet of water: a deep dive, but yet not so deep that your bottom time is reduced to nothing. This dive we find a female octopus with her eggs hanging from the underside of the overturned little craft. It looks like today Mom has dug in for the long hatching session. Good for her! I could stay and watch her for hours on end, but as I glance at my pressure gauge I see that I'm at about 1550 PSI, which means time to start back. As I change my heading I check my bottom timer and see that I've been down for 20 minutes. Down here everything seems relaxed and effortless such that time has a whole different meaning.

I make my way to shallower depths picking and poking at everything as I come up. a nudibranch hanging out on a pipe, not to mention innumerable types and sizes of marine life that could fill a book just to list them all. Many of these I've seen before but it is slightly different each time. That's what makes this dive site fun to dive over and over again.

My computer tells me that this dive was a relaxing 45 minutes. I've seen some old acquaintances and still managed to make a few new friends. I wish I could say that about every 45 minute period of my day. I look up at the lights of Seattle glowing above me that seem to exclaim "Welcome back! How was the dive?" As a sort of answer I turn to my buddy and say, "How does Thursday sound?" "It's good for me!" comes the reply. I remove my fins confident in knowing that in only 48 hours I'll be visiting my friends again.