Point Lobos — Whalers Cove

You kit up at the car park and walk in at the boat ramp, the entry point that makes this cove the reserve's primary diving access and the start of almost every dive here. Reservations and certification cards are checked before you get that far. Beyond the cove the ground is rock and sand under kelp that stands as much as 21 m off the bottom, and the marks divers navigate between sit in the sand channels that run between the reefs.

The first landmark on the standard route is the Worm Patch, a brown dome-shaped worm mound sitting in a sand channel roughly 30 m north of Dog Rock, in 8 to 9 m of water depending on the tide. Its texture, tunnelled by the worms that build it, is what tells it apart from the sand around it. From there the route runs out along the reef, and how much of that swim is under canopy depends on the season: kelp cover here is highly variable.

Further out, Granite Point Wall runs about 77 m long at 18 to 20 m, its face covered in sponges, nudibranchs and soft corals, and it lies some 90 m north-east of the end of Middle Reef. Two more features sit at the edge of recreational range: the Lone Metridium, a freestanding anemone-covered mark at about 21 m, and the Sea Mount, a boxcar-shaped rock with vertical sides that starts near 18 m and drops to about 27 m.

The Lone Metridium is not a target for anyone new to the cove, and less so on a low-visibility day, because finding it depends on running a heading rather than on seeing it. The way back is a return along the reef towards the ramp, finishing shallow in the kelp inside the cove. Submerged car tyres, left on the bottom as habitat, turn up along the way.