Seacrest Park: more of West Seattle
Welcome to Seacrest Park
This post was originally written 7 26 2009
As much as I enjoy a quick jump into the frigid water, many of my friends or their wives who want to hang out on the weekend don’t. What I needed, was a place to swim where my non-sea-otter associates could tag along in the relatively dry refuge of a sea kayak.
Google searches and calls around town revealed dozens of places to rent a kayak. It wasn’t until the day of the outing that I discovered the deception: They rent sea kayaks, but not on the sea. There is literally only ONE place in all of Seattle that would rent us a sea kayak, and that was Alki Kayak Tours. After a half day of incredulous calls to every renter of sea kayaks, I confirmed that there was no other place in Seattle to get a kayak for the Puget Sound. So the stretch of beaches between the commercial waterway and Alki Beach proper were the only choice for such a group outing.
That's one fast drop-off.
We arrived and easily located the rental office. They liked the idea of snorkeling the sound and were very very forthcoming with advice. They warned that large passing boats would create surprise wave surges that made the area surprisingly treacherous – so we were told to avoid the nearby pier where the water taxi lands in West Seattle. The ammount of fishing going on over there added to my hesitation to plumb the depths beneath the ferry landing. Soon the kayakers were given a basic orientation and procedures speech and then in the water. My swim buddy and I soon followed.
Just before getting in, we observed bubbles not 20 feet out from shore. Perplexed, we stood and watched them as they drew nearer. Soon divers emerged in full regalia. I started asking them questions right away. They told us that the visibility was fantastic here and that they had just been down below where they spotted a giant octopus. I couldn’t believe that this would be 20 feet from shore, but as soon as I dove in, the precipitous drop-off was obvious. Visibility was maybe 50 feet, but after paddling a small distance from shore, the bottom disappeared completely.
This was a huge Jelly.
Just 40 feet out, the effect was disconcerting. I found myself swimming in a sea of pure greenish-blue nothingness. I guess that’s just a sea of…sea. I don’t know how deep the water was, but it was very deep. I could see distant jelly’s beneath me, all around me, and some of them were startlingly huge. Their long trailing tendrils were easily 20 feet long in some cases. This put me on edge. Without any other visual cues other than the snowlike litter of tiny white marine critters, punctuated at times with the looming yellow menace of yet another giant jelly, it was like swimming in endless space. You couldn’t tell if you were seeing into 1000 feet of clear water, or two feet of cloudy murk. I often found myself sticking my head up out of the water just to make sense of time and space itself. I had no way to gauge my speed, direction, or much of anything else. A creeping fear of the unknown began to assert itself. Then came the strange noises.
Being so near a shipping lane, the water was alive with the sound of clanking, banging, gurgling large boats. I played for a while at trying to match sounds to certain boats. A dodgy looking old ferry made the sound of a giant metal chain being dragged over a pile of cans in hell. A large cargo vessel sounded like it was propelled by somebody hitting a dumpster with a bat.
Maybe 20 feet beneath the camera.
Thus, although we began following our Kayak friends we soon broke off pursuit and made for some interesting-looking pilings that were sticking out of the water nearer to shore.
I remembered my earlier Tacoma swim and the potential hazards around broken pilings, so we proceeded with extreme caution towards them – mindful of the unpredictable surge of waves that could come at any time.
I continually dangled my arm and camera as low as I could to make sure I could still see them clearly – having a hard time believing that the soft green we proceeded through was really clear water.
Eventually the clarity was evident far beneath us, the first broken pilings covered in giant anemones other sea life. As we neared the pilings that still emerged from the water, we saw a dramatic uptic in the diversity and energy of the water around us. Broken remains of an ancient dock emerged scores of feet below, and as we neared shallower water the pilings crept closer to us until we ended face to face with one large trunk that was absolutely covered in comically large marine organisms.
Check out the size of that star fish!
HUGE sea stars of every kind hugged these ancient logs that swayed menacingly back and forth in the tide. That motion made me wary of this place as being trapped beneath a falling piling entered my already heightened imagination. Still, it was worth checking out. We made sure to avoid touching the pilings as they seemed as alive as any coral that I’ve ever seen.
We followed them all the way back to shore where a particularly nice, already fallen, piling lays across the bottom. It’s covered in spindly legged crabs, giant sea stars, feeding sea perch, and huge anenomes. We lingered here for some time.
This star fish has big buns.
Eventually we followed the coast and discovered, upon rounding a headland, that our further progress was barred by a boat ramp and dock. We beached ourselves and walked north along the shore until we found another place to put in.
The second beach along the “Alki strip” is a sometimes-beach that only really shows up when the tide is out. We had to scramble down a talus field of rocks to get to it, but once in, we discovered beds of sea grass, schools of sardine, and lots of amazing life. Of particular interest was a VERY dense school of some kind of long finger-sized fish that moved like a tornado into the deeper water. The word that came to mind was ‘bait ball’. Sadly the camera had already been filled, so instead of filming of photographing them, we had to just enjoy the show and frolic with the salty little fellows instead.
"Second Beach" has very clear water.
The water here was clear and deep. As we proceeded neared a rock wall that separated us from the nearby boat ramp and dock, the bottom once again quickly disappeared from sight.
As we were getting out, we finally witnessed some of the surge that the Kayak shop had warned us about. Large waves more suited to hawaii than Seattle came crashing to the shore and I was glad that this hadn’t rolled in while I was near one of the pilings.
Huge Spindly Crab.
It was a thoroughly interesting area and a great three-hour swim. Given the location’s proximity to some truly top-notch swims as well as it’s proximity to shipping lanes, I probably won’t be back any time soon for a swim – but I will definitely go there again to get my Kayak on in the near future. Then again, its popular for divers and if you are in mixed company, you can swim while others can boat. If you find yourself here with nothing to do, drop on in – the water’s fine.
Seacrest out.
Tags: Good Visibility
