North Coast Dive Community
From Seals Fun Dives to What's Next
For years, Seals Watersports helped bring North Coast divers together through community fun dives, conservation projects and volunteer diving.
Although our Santa Rosa retail location has closed, the community that grew around those dives is still here — and I'd like to help keep it connected.
That's one of the reasons I started the North Coast Dive Collective (NCDC), a community for scuba divers, freedivers, spearfishers, scientific divers, conservation divers and others who spend time underwater along the North Coast.
JOIN THE NORTH COAST DIVE COLLECTIVE ON DISCORD
Use NCDC to find dive buddies, share dive reports and conditions, hear about local events and volunteer opportunities, and connect with other North Coast divers.
PURP — Born From the Seals Dive Community
Purple Urchin Removal Project (PURP)
PURP started with an idea from local diver Eric Sedletsky, who approached me about organizing divers to help address the explosion of purple urchins and loss of kelp along the North Coast.
At the time, Seals already had an active fun-dive community, so rather than starting another program ourselves, we opened that community up to Eric and gave PURP a place to get started. Our fun-dive list became PURP's initial way of reaching local divers, and Seals became a home base for the project.
Over the years, we hosted PURP meetings and dive briefings at the shop, helped connect divers with the project, answered questions and promoted the effort to the local dive community. Jennifer in particular spent countless hours helping divers get involved.
From there, Eric took it and ran with it. What started with a group of local divers grew into a much larger volunteer effort under his leadership.
I'm proud that Seals was able to help give PURP a place to grow, and even though our Santa Rosa store has closed, I want to continue supporting the project and helping North Coast divers find ways to get involved.
Caspar Beach, Mendocino County, California
Help the Kelp
Caspar Cove is open to culling purple urchins.
With some effort from divers the kelp is starting to return to the cove.
Join the effort and participate.
Divers should only target purple urchins. If you need help distinguishing between purple and red urchins, please see the field guide below.
Each individual diver should complete one log entry per dive.
Divers must have a valid recreational fishing license (except on July 4 and Labor Day) https://wildlife.ca.gov/licensing/online-sales
Stay Connected to North Coast Diving
Looking for dive buddies, local dive reports, conservation projects, scientific diving, spearfishing or other opportunities to get in the water?
Stay Connected to North Coast Diving
Looking for dive buddies, local dive reports, conservation projects, scientific diving, spearfishing or other opportunities to get in the water?