Stone Steps on the Leucadia/Encinitas border has become one of my favorite places to dive.  At high tide, you can reach a depth of up to 26 feet and still find all the nooks and cranny's where the lobsters and eels hide out.  There is a lot of kelp and eel grass out here, and tons of sea life.  On my last dive I saw eels, lobster, crabs, kelp bass, calico bass, and sheephead.  If you can handle the seven flights of stairs this is a must do dive!

Tamarack Surf Beach is a great dive also.  You need to hit this one on a low surf day, as the shore break can be really harsh.  Very shallow dive.  At high tide you can get maybe 20 feet of depth.  There is so much to see here; surf perch, kelp bass, sheephead crabs, eels, lobster, and some great rock formations.  There's even a swim through if you know where to go. 

The Ruby E. is a coast guard cutter that was decommissioned and placed in "wreck alley" in San Diego as an artificial reef.  As you can see from the picture above, it is covered in what we call strawberry anenomes.  She looks like a full blown parade float sitting at the bottom.  Max depth is 86 feet, water temperature ranges from 48 in winter to 53 in summer. (yes, that's degrees Farenheit folks!)

I had the opportunity to do Beacon's one night for lobster season.  The swim out past the kelp rivals the 1/4 mile swim to the canyon out at La Jolla.   It was probably a 45 minute swim out to the outter edge of the kelp, but it was soooo worth the swim!  Tons of kelp, ledges, fishes, lobster, and crabs.  A whole plethera of sealife abounds here.  (probably because the divers aren't too plentiful)  The double switchback trail down the hill isn't bad; and I actually think I prefer this trail to the seven flights of steps at stone steps!  I can't wait to do it in the daylight hours.