Northwest Dive Club

From the WSA:

You are invited to an open forum regarding potential improvements to the Redondo Beach dive site in Des Moines. Please consider attending one of the following dates to voice your opinions and ideas. Redondo Beach is the most popular dive site in the South Puget Sound. We have an opportunity to protect the site for diving and potentially develop the site specifically for diving. Possible improvements include both in-water and access structures.

Cool! The ThThTh group should go on Thursday then dive

Also it would be great if they put some picnic tables or benches in the parking lot or near the sidewalk for gearing up.

I'll be out of town for the Nov 9th, and 29th, but will plan to attend the Dec 5th meeting.

Word on the street is that part of this project is removal of the existing artificial reef structure .... EVERYONE should attend and have their voices be heard!

What's the rumor, what do they want to tear down? The bottle field? bug? pipe? Black pearl?

I believe they should be building something tall, up into the current and away from the silt!

Lol... Away from the silt would take it out of redondo entirely! But it would be good to hear what they are in fact going to remove. Because everything down there right now basically benefits dives.

I'm having a hard time distinguishing between the existing reef structure and junk.

I'd like a diver elevator at the end of the fishing pier. And, the elimination of fishing.

stphnmartin wrote:I'm having a hard time distinguishing between the existing reef structure and junk.

I'd like a diver elevator at the end of the fishing pier. And, the elimination of fishing.

I agree. I would like to see most of the stuff at the north end go away. There's are lot of PVC pipes left over from an obstacle course, part of a VW, part of a trailer, light shades, etc. All of it's junk as far as I can tell. Jim Trask from WSA is talking that there will be a big bronze statue placed down below Salty's plus some rock reefs similar to Saltwater. Be interesting to hear what he'll have to say.

There is a bridge available and they will give someone $1M to take and maintain it. Would make a good artificial reef. However, I don’t know a lot about the rusting aspect. But they sink ships for reefs??? Probably not an option, but sure would be a cool thing to dive on.




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One man's junk is another divers treasure I guess. But out in no man's land, a rock reef would be awesome. Maybe pull out the black pearl and do it from there over to just west of what's left of the vw. And yeah, pull out the vw remains.

Gdog wrote:One man's junk is another divers treasure I guess. But out in no man's land, a rock reef would be awesome. Maybe pull out the black pearl and do it from there over to just west of what's left of the vw. And yeah, pull out the vw remains.

Agreed. Something like saltwater would be amazing. I do like the large pipe though, not the sharks


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stphnmartin wrote:I'm having a hard time distinguishing between the existing reef structure and junk.

I'd like a diver elevator at the end of the fishing pier. And, the elimination of fishing.

I agree! A no fishing zone/marine sanctuary would be so fantastic!

Also I love dive elevators!!! Good idea!

Scubie that bridge looks awesome! I'd love to dive around it! I can see the anemones & kelp crabs covering it already.

I hope a lot of divers can show up and support the project -- We need them to know people dive there and the community is very interested in whats going on.

We have our normal ThThTh dive there next Thursday. Hopefully we have a great turnout.


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something like these would be good

https://www.3ders.org/articles/20160709 ... stems.html

Just want to thank all of you that make this possible for me. Don't think that you're not making a difference. If I were not 5-6 hours away ( one way) I would be involved with this any way I could.

Living near Walla Walla I enjoy heading over to the sound almost monthly to dive. It's a lot of travel round trip, and the expenses of over night. Also when I go out on a dive boat, those costs as well. Just know that the efforts you folks provide to continue to protect and develop this does not go un-noticed or unappreciated!

Thank you!

stphnmartin wrote:I'm having a hard time distinguishing between the existing reef structure and junk.

I'd like a diver elevator at the end of the fishing pier. And, the elimination of fishing.

I'll trust that's humor, because positioning the diving community against the fishing community would be a losing proposition. If anything, selling a reef as something that would attract more fish ... and therefore enhance fishing from the pier ... would have a greater chance of getting approved.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I've been looking at the old Puyallup river bridge ever since it was removed thinking what a great dive site it would make! However, I was told that the state won't allow anything metal to be used as a reef.

there is no faster way to get this killed than to pair it with a marine protected area (MPA) - even the non-fishing hunters will lobby like crazy against even the mere perception of reducing any kind of hunting/fishing access

The plan includes leaving the fishing pier outside the proposed area. The proposed south boundary was basically where the big rope is that runs due west from the Mast. The discussion included leaving the fishing unimpeded. Stephen's references were intended as humor.

Here's an update from Mike @ WSA:

Hello friends and colleagues,

I’m happy to report the Washington state capitol budget passed the legislature late last week and was signed by Governor Inslee. Funding of $500,000 for the dive site at Redondo Beach was part of the budget. Senator Karen Keiser was instrumental in helping us secure this investment in recreation infrastructure and the dive community. If you have a minute, it would be nice to send her a thank you note. Her email is karen.keiser@leg.wa.gov

What’s next/status on the Redondo Beach project.

1.I owe you the notes/updates from our last meeting. I’ll have that out by the end of the weekend.

2.Permitting will now begin in earnest. The design will model the input we received from you at our 3 public input meetings.

3.We have a presentation on the project to the Des Moines City Council scheduled for Thursday February 22 at 7:00pm. Councilmember Matt Mahoney was key to getting us access. Thank you Matt! It would be very helpful if you attended the presentation in support of the project. The lease that defines the dive site will be held by the City of Des Moines. They have to agree to hold the lease. They need to know the dive community supports the project. The council meets in the Des Moines City Hall at 21630 11th Ave S., Suite C, Des Moines, WA. Put it on your calendar - I hope you can attend.

4.We’ll be meeting with staff from the Aquatic Resources Division at DNR next week. This is where we start getting into the nitty gritty regarding some of the issues we discussed at the public input meetings, particularly the physical site boundary, lease terms, what stays, what goes, and where we might do other types of mitigation such at tire removal north of Saltwater State Park. We will keep you posted regarding the content of those discussions.

5.Rus Higley had a discussion on Monday with several landscape architect professors/graduate students from the University of Washington regarding the project. I’ll ask Rus to send a status report on that.

6.The MaST Center will be leading the scientific study efforts on the site. Our hope is the dive community can provide a significant component of the underwater data acquisition. One of the pitfalls of citizen science is that it is often not well-coordinated with the resource management agencies who have authority and responsibility to manage aquatic resources. To that end, we will be soliciting input from marine and habitat scientists from WA Dept. of Fish & Wildlife, NOAA Fisheries, and the US Fish & Wildlife Service to help us design the scientific inquiries. These inquiries are required for permitting and also present an opportunity to study what happens when you build a man-made rocky reef in Puget Sound using natural materials. We didn’t do much (really any) of that kind of study at Saltwater State Park, and intend to do a better job at Redondo. The upshot of it all is that we hope there is real science for the diving community to participate in.

That’s it for now. If you have questions, please ask.

Thanks.

Mike
Mike Racine | Director of Government Affairs
425.830.9545

So excited about this!! Absolutely huge....

Thanks to all who have had and will have a part in this!

Washington Scuba Alliance (WSA) is working hard on this. Please consider joining and/or renewing membership. Only $25 a year. They also do a golf ball hunt during the scuba show in April, another way to support their efforts.

bradmond wrote:Washington Scuba Alliance (WSA) is working hard on this. Please consider joining and/or renewing membership. Only $25 a year. They also do a golf ball hunt during the scuba show in April, another way to support their efforts.

Thanks for suggesting this!

Just went online and joined. Should have done this a long time ago!

So bummed about this.