Northwest Dive Club

I have an opportunity to go out Saturday on a private boat that's currently moored down in Tacoma. The person's a very experienced diver, but not from around here. Since tides aren't conducive to some of the sites I'm more familiar with, I figured we might head over to Zee's Reef.

Problem is ... not being a boat owner ... I dunno how to get there.

Can anyone provide coordinates? Any other helpful info? I've dived the site many times ... but always off a charter.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

47-14-61 N
122-36-09 W

North side of Fox Island.

47deg 14.841
122deg 36.209
Decimal minutes as most GPSs like that format best.

Look for a small white boathouse shack on the shoreline. That is sorta the NW end of the reef. Use the depth sounder roughly perpendicular to that starting in 30ft of water. You should find the reef fairly easily. Expect surface currents to the SE, it almost always "ebbs" there.

If the boat is anchored you can run a spool or reel from the anchor out over the lip of the wall. Leave the spool don't tied it off to anything. Do and out and back dive and you can easily find the line and ascend right back up the anchor line. If push comes to shove and you don't fine the spool, when you pull the anchor you'll get it back.

Have fun, lots of lings there last month and an octo out in the open.

We dove there yesterday off a Bandito boat, and it was great. Lots of little life, as well as 4 or 5 lingcod sitting on eggs, HUGE rockfish, as well as a pair of wolf eels and a giant octo. Toward the end of the dive the wife and I headed up the wall and started moving toward safety stop depth, and came upon a little octo, probably a red, not more than a foot from the top of his head to the tips of his tentacles, just sitting out in the open thinking about whatever an octopus thinks about. A great dive.

Its been a marine protected area for a few years now and its turned it from a good site to a great site.