My favorite diving area along this road is the outcropping of underwater rocks located off the beach just north of the access point near 25116 Malibu Road. I should caution you though, sometimes this access gate is mysteriously locked, and then you have to make a long walk down from the public beach. There are four good sized rocks jutting up halfway to the surface in 30 to 40 feet of water about 100 yards or more offshore directly in front of the exposed rocks in the surf line onshore (see the map on last week’s post). You can enter off the beach on either side and swim directly out to sea, and you’ll usually find a few pieces of straggly kelp growing on them to mark their location for you.
This is a good boat fishing spot too, although it’s a long way from any launching point. Kayaks won’t have any problems though, because it’s an easy paddle down from the public beach.
The largest of the four structures is the northern one. It runs parallel to the beach, and it’s about 40 feet long and 10 feet wide with a slit on the side facing the shore where bugs like to hide. There’s a good population of sand and calico bass, and a few sheephead that make their home here year-round. Halibut like to hang in the sand around the rocks at times. There used to be a ton of large rock scallops here, but they’ve been worked over pretty well over the years, and the last time I was here most of them were small and not worth taking. This is also a good spot for photography if you like to shoot pictures of small critters hiding in crevasses.
I used to walk down from the public beach and begin my dive around these rocks using about half a tank, and then work my way through the scattered rocky outcroppings found in 25 to 30 feet of water back toward the main beach. I actually found more bugs living in the smaller rocky areas than on or around the larger structures, go figure. There are nice sand stretches inside and outside where summer halibut live, too.
There’s a creek at the north end of the public beach (not shown on the map) where I’ve had a lot of luck spearing halibut. Work out and north looking in the sand adjacent to the many rocky patches found there, and you should do well. That area north of the creek is private beach, but I’ve never had any problems crossing over it to dive.
The access gate near 24712 is another so-so, off-and-on stretch similar to the ones described for map points 2 and 3. It’s worth checking out, but it wouldn’t be my first choice if I were diving along this road for the first time. The underwater offshore rocks near access point 5, and the kelp bed and rocky ledges near access point 1, are the best places to start to become familiar with Malibu Road. This area was outstanding in the old days but now students from Pepperdine University on the hill across from PCH use it as their front yard. Diver pressure has increased because of that, and we all know what happens when you have more divers picking over limited resources in a defined area. Still, most of those kids are surfers, so there’s still some good diving to be had. Try it, you’ll like it!