It makes diving there pretty easy and not difficult to get your gear down near the water. But be warned- this is a current intensive site and if you don’t plan the tides right, you can be swept quite a ways from where you parked.We did a couple of dives at Alki Junkyard a few weekends ago. Sorry for the lateness of this posting-
For those who might not know, Alki Junkyard is located in West Seattle and not a long ways from the famous Alki Cove’s- you just continue driving around the point a bit till the beach looks like it ends. There is a big concrete walkway that skirts along between the water and the road there. Stairs are conveniently placed where you can access the beach.
Brian Hull, a DM with Seven Seas Scuba was giving the dive briefing to us all and, I have to say, he did a really excellent job. Not only did he talk about the stuff you would expect- like the dive site layout, currents, safety, buddy teams, etc. but he really gave a nice back ground of the Alki/West Seattle area that was totally cool and actually pretty captivating. He even had some pictures to help illustrate some of the history of this unique spot.
In the area now known as Alki, there was an amusement park built near Duwamish Head in West Seattle in about 1907. Billed as the “Greatest Amusement Park of the West Coast” it featured some rides that were destined for the much larger San Francisco area but wound up here due to the big earthquake.
From Wikipedia:
Additionally, Luna Park hosted daily acts, including the clown Uncle Hiram, Don Carlo’s Trained Monkey and Dog Circus, and the Original Human Ostrich. The park featured a live bear pit, as well as several transitory exhibits, such as Baby Incubators. The park was also host to a variety of concessions and games of chance, such as shooting galleries and ball tosses. One of the park’s most prominent structures was its Natatorium, which housed heated saltwater and freshwater swimming pools.”
Luna Park was accessible by trolley, the West Seattle ferry, or the Seattle Municipal Railway’s Luna Park Line. During evening hours the park was brilliantly illuminated, with each building and ride outlined in bulbs. Because of its extravagant lighting scheme the park could be seen for miles and was billed as a safe nighttime destination for women and children.
Other of Luna Park’s nighttime attractions weren’t as popular among the moral community of West Seattle. The park boasted the longest and best-stocked bar on Elliott Bay, a venue that angered the citizens around Alki. Feeling that drunks would overrun their community, West Seattle petitioned to be annexed into the City of Seattle in the hope that its conservative mayor, William Hickman Moore, would address this and other concerns.”
You can read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_Park,_Seattle
http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/luna_park_seattle.html
But you can see where it’s going. Some folks thought it was just bringing out the baser instincts in people and sought to have it shut down and removed- which it was. Parts of it remain to this day- the boardwalk pilings can be seen at extreme low tide and the carousel is still functioning at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco, California
Fast forward to today: it is romantic to think that you could dive here and maybe find some kinds of remnants of a ferris wheel or roller coaster but I would say the chances of that would be slim to none. I do think if you were to dive in that area and were really persistent you could find stuff that would suggest that something was there long ago. But the actual site isn’t right where the amusement park was.
This was a shop organized trip from http://www.sevenseasscuba.com/ and I like going to their monthly shore dives because: #1: they are free (‘cept for fuel- ouch!) #2: you get to see a lot of great folks in one place doing the stuff you like to do and #3: It’s always funner to dive with more people- unless they stir up the bottom, in which case, I want to be first in the water.
Be advised- the current can rip here. We tried to plan our dives to straddle the slack.
First dive went pretty well. We got in swam out a bit and went down. There is a few bouys in the water – they are attached to a rope that runs parallel to shore and has “stuff” strewn about for wildlife to live in. Similar to some other dive sites in the sound. We checked out stuff along the rope as a group of 4 and were surprised to see a couple of red octos hanging out in some rubble and anemones. I tried to get a photo but was too far behind and they were well hidden when I got there. We saw some other cool things including a giant colony of feather dusters attached to some big item- they completely covered it and it looked really strange but cool.
The second dive- you could tell the waves were kicking up a lot. And toward the end of dive one, you could feel the current picking up too. I went in with Bishop, a dive buddy I have met on FB and one of his buds. We got down and the current was kicking our butts down at the bottom. We had to power along pretty well with the fins to make headway and it was a lot of work. His buddy was getting low on air and told us he was heading back so Bishop and I continued on. We did manage to see a nice young wolf eel and then came upon a big bunch of squid eggs. There was a squid doing something to the eggs– we think it was laying more maybe. I got some pics and video and it was a pretty cool thing to see.
I gotta say, I have seen squid eggs before but not with the momma squid hanging around. It was a lot of fun to watch.
To soon, the dive was over. We headed back in and, as always, it was fun diving with my main dive bud (Dea, the wife) and good friends. I will certainly dive here again to check out the wildlife- others were seeing stubby squid which is something I haven’t seen yet…though, I have seen their eggs
See you next time in the water!
