Coral Reef Travel

It’s September and the water’s still warm. Visibility approaches 50 feet, and as you swim between walls of sponges, anemones, sea stars and hydroids, a pair of wolf fish defending their lair stare at you with toothy jaws agape. In the shadows that define the limits of your visibility, a single shark slips away into the kelpy sea.

The place is Jimmy’s Ledge, a collection of four underwater canyons accessible from York Beach, Maine. With diverse dive sites, attractive shore diving and a comfortable resort setting, York Beach is one of New England’s premier dive locations.

Count on needing the better part of the short summer season to exhaust the possibilities among The Isle of Shoals, a group of islands just a 30-minute boat ride from the beach. In addition to the four canyons at Jimmy’s Ledge, you can dive plateaus, kelp forests, drop-offs and walls densely covered with an astonishing variety of North Atlantic marine life. Sponges, sea stars, anemones and hydroids provide shelter for nudibranchs, sculpin, lumpfish, tunicates, mussels, crabs, urchins, and, of course, an abundance of lobsters.

For underwater photography, you can’t beat the seal dive off Boon Island, a short seven miles from shore. Boon Island is a rookery for over 100 curious seals. The dive boat anchors in 15 to 30 feet of water where divers sit back to back on the seafloor. It’s usually no more than a few minutes before the divers are “discovered” by the curious seals.

At high tide, the shore diving at Nubble Light is another York Beach specialty. A gently sloping slab of granite makes for easy access into a small bay that is filled with encrusted boulders. Northern red anemones and their delicate cousins, white and pink frilled anemones, decorate the boulders where wolf fish and sea ravens hide. At 80 feet you can also expect to see ocean pout, large sea stars, and an occasional torpedo ray.

Location

York Beach is located just north of the Maine-New Hampshire border and within easy driving distance of Boston, Mass., Portsmouth, N.H., and Portland, Maine. Take the “Yorks-Ogunquit” exit (exit 4) off I-95. Turn left at the light onto Route 1 and go north for just over three miles. Turn right onto Route 1A and follow it to York Beach.

Water Temperature

York Beach diving is a year-round activity despite winter water temps of 35F to 40F and summer temps of 55F to 60F that demand a dry suit.

Profile

Visibility varies with temperature, averaging 50 feet in summer and 80 feet in winter.

Operators

York Beach Scuba (207-363-3330) is the only local dive shop and also operates its own resort. The resort offers New England’s only underwater photography school as well as rebreather training from Technical Diving International.

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