Northwest Dive Club

Dive Site Name: Salt Water State Park

Skill Level: Intermediate / Advanced (See Below for descriptions.)

Current Sensitive: YES and Tide Sensitive.

Location/Address:Marine View Dr S, Des Moines, WA 98198

Coordinates : 47.37328°N, 122.32758°W

Directions: Its in De Moines, Google Salt Water State Park and get directions.

Free Parking: No - Lots of parking, but you need to display a "Discover Pass" or pay upon entry.

Staging Area: GREAT Staging area with picnic tables

Surface Swim: Long surface swim!! or on low tide a long hike!

Nearby Facilities: Bathroom, picnic spot, bbq facilities, everything you would expect at a state park.

Depth: Reef starts at 40ft and goes down to about 90ft

Known Hazards: Current, Long surface

Dive Site Description:
There are 3 artificial reefs that replaced an old tire reef and barge that was removed. This reef is pretty young (About 4 years old i think)

GREAT structure and LOTS of life! Its a FANTASTIC boat dive and also a great shore dive, but remember its a long ass swim out to the reef.

There are 3 mooring buoys (one on each reef) and makes for easy boat dives.

Map showing how far from shore the reefs are (900ft heading NorthWest): Map of the 3 reefs, they start at about 40ft and go down to about 90ft each.
[ <<-- North is that way ] Here is a video to show relief data and rough idea of how they are situated on the hillside.

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Sonar data collected by Koos du Preez and Mike Racine, Sonar processing by Ben Griner, Video made with Fledermaus Pro.

I think this takes the gold star for dive site listings!

LCF wrote:I think this takes the gold star for dive site listings!

No kidding! AWESOME!

The tire reef was not removed. We missed the north reef today by going too far north on dive 1.

There were hundreds and hundreds of tires between 40-60 fsw north of the north reef.

Just one comment about this site . . . surface current here can be horrendous, especially with a south wind. It can be bad enough that scooters can't make headway against it. I still don't completely understand the currents at depth -- my husband dove here midway through a very large flood and had none -- but on windy days, I'd say pick another site.

yea, those south winds make that site just brutal.

Jeremy wrote:The tire reef was not removed. We missed the north reef today by going too far north on dive 1.

There were hundreds and hundreds of tires between 40-60 fsw north of the north reef.

There used to be thousands and thousands of tires! The removed most of them, but only in the vicinity of the new reef. The north ones got left.

Wow, I had no idea the old reef was so massive. What was the point of taking it out?

Jeremy wrote:Wow, I had no idea the old reef was so massive. What was the point of taking it out?

Tire reefs suck. They used to be a convenient way to build a reef and dispose of a whole lot of tires. But research has demonstrated that they aren't very good habitat (I don't have my finger on a citation at the moment). So you only really got the durable and tolerate critters living in/on them. They took it out and properly disposed of the tires when they built the new rock reef. Typically they burn waste tires in cement kilns or they get ground up and used in a variety of things as fillers (they don't go to landfills). I'm not sure what they do with salt water soaked ones though, maybe the ranger would know where they went.

There were thousands and thousands of tires.. the Army Corp Of Engineers came out with a massive ship and army divers and removed all the old tires where the reef is today.

The purpose of this side-scan was actually to establish the size of the left over tires in order for them to be removed.. I just took out the tires from the "dive site map"..

Here is the complete side-scan survey we did, including the tires way up north.. you can see the remaining tire debris field is as large as all three current artificial reefs combined!!

there are tires scattered all the way up to this larger debris field I marked in the image, but the highest concentration is in that area i marked.

Oh - And if you want to see something scary..

This is sort of what it used to look like.. Here is another side scan survey of DeMoines fishing pier.. We did the same survey to establish the magnitude of this reef.. the longer term idea is to pull this entire reef and replace it with natural rock reef like Saltwater.

This tire reef is smaller and its about 600 x 500 feet with at least 2,000 tires.

Yeah, thats like about 7 Acres of tires!!!

That's amazing - very interesting!

I love side scan sonar!

I would list Saltwater as advanced with the addendum for the young or very fit only! There is no way this old fart is considering this dive in any way other than a live boat situation.

Placing an artificial reef at the point of a stream outflow is never a good idea due to the long swim but I can understand that it needed to be at an already existing state park to be able to reduce the costs involved and make it a multi use park.

Its a great site to scooter from shore btw

I still don't get the point of pulling a tire reef and replacing it with a rock reef. Yeah, rock reefs are better.

But why not put them at places like Kayak Point, Mukilteo, Edmonds Dry Dock, or TTN that have no reef? Pulling a tire reef has to destroy a lot of life.

I would love to see a nice reef straight out from the entry at about 50-60' at TTN......

cardiver wrote:I would love to see a nice reef straight out from the entry at about 50-60' at TTN......

+1

It would be an awesome site but parking would be a big problem.

Of course right now it's fishermen! :angry:

Thank God that is short lived.

Me too. Imagine some nice structure with the good viz at TTN...would be awesome. Put it between the tires and cabin cruiser or tires and golf ball boat imo.

To bad there isn't way to allow divers and other interested parties to fund such sites.

Jeremy wrote:Pulling a tire reef has to destroy a lot of life.

Not as much as you think. Tires are crappy habitat and probably smush as many benthic critters living on or in the underlying mud for the few anenomes and things they support. Langley's tire reef was ok, but the logs helped create a way more complex structure.

FL has realized tires suck and is removing tens of thousands of them off some of their beaches.

Jeremy wrote:I still don't get the point of pulling a tire reef and replacing it with a rock reef. Yeah, rock reefs are better.

But why not put them at places like Kayak Point, Mukilteo, Edmonds Dry Dock, or TTN that have no reef? Pulling a tire reef has to destroy a lot of life.

According to WDFW the tire reefs are bad for the environment and they over time degrade and is best to remove it.

At all the dive and fishing locations they would need to replace it with something if they were to yank out the current reefs.

I have a list of about 20 tire reefs that needs to be surveyed and cataloged so there is more data to support any decision on how to prioritize the rip and replace project.

If you look at how well the Saltwater 4 yr old reef is doing and how life is thriving on the Alki Fishing reef, its hard to argue that a bigger/higher structure of natural rock, etc. is better for both wild life habitats and possibly increase the sustainability of the wildlife.

and putting the large structures in somewhat current sensitive locations is actually the better choice for creating a good place that attracts and sustains wild life.. more water movement, more nutrients, more critters.

Good article, although a bit dated.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nat ... reef_x.htm

I am all for tire removal. Especially with the idea of replacement as a integral part of the plan. They are a very poor habitat and just plain ugly. Wish the concept were a part of the creosote removal plans too. Those projects do a lot of harm to the wildlife and leave wastelands in there place.

the problem with todays budget isnt removing them, its replacing them.

Q on salt water. What current station and current correction do you use?

Could you dive this site in the middle of a 1knot flood, 2knot ebb, etc as measured from Admiralty etc? (assuming you want to avoid reasonable current). Assuming no wind.

Thanks!
-Eric