Customer Reviews

Diving and Snorkeling Monterey Peninsula and Northern California (Lonely Planet Diving & Snorkeling Great Barrier Reef)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I regularly dive the monterey area and I was looking for more information about the area, and the north coast. This book was great! Beautiful pictures and great information. The book works very well for deciding on a place to dive, and is a great reference for finding new dive sites.

This is a great overview of the most popular Monterey/Carmel dives, with accurate dive information/directions and good guidance regarding levels of expertise. I've sent this to "warm-water-only" diver friends and made a few converts -- it's not shy about the cold water (easily dealt with by proper gear), but shows off the majesty of kelp beds and the delights of diving with seals, sea lions and sea otters to advantage.

More experienced buddies who thought they knew it all about particular dives have been skeptical watching me (a relative novice) pull this out of my bag, but after review commented that it's an excellent resource for dive planning (e.g., depths, navigation, surge, what to look for). For a tourist to the area wanting to get in a bit of diving, a great resource to supplement a local guide. For us locals, a nice addition to word-of-mouth, an end to playing "guess the species," and a great resource when arguing about where to dive next time .

I bought this book and the Diving and Snorkeling Guide to the Cayman Islands sight unseen. Ususaly Lonely Planet has great books but not this time. This is a dive guide, not a snorkeling guide. Putting Snorkeling into the title is a blatent attempt to sell more books. There is almost no info about where to snorkel in Monterey or Northern California. Instead, the info is just about diving. Info about diving a site that is in 75 feet (etc..) of water has nothing to do with being able to snorkel it.