Veteran's Park

Veterans Park in Redondo Beach is one of the most popular and widely used shore dive sites in the greater Los Angeles area — a beginner-friendly entry point that offers reliable access to a sandy-bottom environment with scattered artificial reef structures, making it a perennial favorite for certification training, night diving, and low-key recreational dives within reach of millions of Southern California residents. The site is located in Redondo Beach's King Harbor area, and the combination of protected harbor-adjacent waters, a gradual entry ramp, and consistently moderate conditions makes it an ideal site for divers new to California ocean diving. The bottom is predominantly sand, with artificial reef structures — concrete rubble, rock piles, and in some seasons discarded Christmas trees sunk by the local dive club — providing hard substrate for marine life to colonize. Depths within comfortable shore-diving range are typically 15 to 35 feet, extending to about 60 feet with a longer surface swim. Despite the sandy, sheltered character, Veterans Park hosts a surprisingly rich roster of marine species. Bat rays are among the signature encounters — these large, graceful animals cruise the sandy bottom or rest half-buried against the sediment, their broad disk silhouettes distinctive from above. California halibut lie camouflaged against the sand, detectable only by the slight distortion of their outline or the circular outline of a half-buried eye. Round stingrays are common, lying in the sand at shallow depths — awareness of their position is an important skill California divers develop early. Turbot and various flatfish species complete the sand-flat community. At the artificial reef structures, rockfish occupy different positions depending on species and size, and kelp bass hover near reef edges. The site is excellent for night diving, when bioluminescent plankton sometimes lights the water with pale blue-green fire at the touch of a wave or fin stroke. Veterans Park may lack the drama of open-coast kelp forest dives, but its accessibility and consistent conditions make it an invaluable part of the Southern California diving community.