Scuba Diving Titlow Beach: Dive Site Review

Last Updated on October 29, 2024 by Candice Landau

Type of dive: Saltwater; shore dive
Diving level: Intermediate to advanced
Current: Significant when not timed right. Dive at slack on a low exchange
Average depth: Max 45 feet (for the stuff that’s worth seeing). This is a shallow site!
GPS coordinates: 47.246950795347274, -122.5533620601793

Honest answer to “would you dive this site again”?

Absolutely! The next time I dive Titlow Beach I’ll take my Olympus TG-6 instead of my GoPro, and I’ll make sure the exchange is low so that I have enough time to check out the ledges and more of the old bottle field.

How to dive Titlow: The beach, the bottle field, and more

I wanted to dive Titlow Beach before I even knew it was a Washington State dive destination. It’s a stone’s throw away from Narrows Brewing (which has great outdoor seating), looks out over the dramatic expanse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and plays host to stacks of old ferry pilings that are a haven for marine life.

For anyone diving this site for the first time, approach with caution. The Tacoma Narrows has some particularly strong currents. Don’t let the pristine waters have you throwing caution to the wind. You’ll want to dive site at the slack tide—high or low. While this site is suitable for beginners when dived at the right time, I haven’t rated it as such because I find that most new divers have very little understanding of how to dive new sites safely, if for no other reason than dive training agencies tend to leave explaining what to look out for and how to assess sites to the instructors and divemasters.

After some brief research of my own, I realized this was a site I either needed to dive with someone who’d done it before or that I needed to get a really thorough briefing on in order to play it safe. I know plenty of divers who throw caution to the wind, but I prefer to approach new sites with a healthy dose of respect. After all, it also makes for much more relaxed diving when I don’t have the anxiety of an angry current knawing at my heels.

To obtain my dive site briefing, I asked multiple people for their take on this site. Carlos from Underwater Sports in Federal Way gave me a great overview. He even pulled out a physical copy of Tidelog 2021 (which I’ve since purchased) and pointed out a good day to dive Titlow—a day when the exchange was about 2 feet, and when diving at high slack would be within “human hours” (not at 7 am, or 9 pm). I also checked out the Titlow Dive Site review in Northwest Shore Dives, and in 151 Dives. Suffice to say, I was ready!

Finally, when I showed up to dive Titlow (on a low exchange and at high slack), I asked a couple of divers who were just getting out the water for a quick overview. They told me how to dive the site when current was present, which areas to head to, and what to look out for. As they were coming up to slack on a 6-foot exchange from low, they said they’d experienced significant current, but knew how to dive the site, and had dived it as a drift, from south to north.

My buddy and I entered the water and were immediately struck by the clarity. The earlier divers had estimated about 25 feet of visibility—I don’t think they were far off as throughout the dive we could see the surface. I suspect picking a low exchange day meant things didn’t get stirred up too much either. That, or we got lucky.

The first thing you’ll notice when you wend through the shallow pilings is how much bottom cover there is, and how many sculpins atop it! I don’t think I’ve ever dived anywhere else with quite this many. A few perch came over to check us out too, but mostly the sea lettuce obscured all. Once you pass the initial rocky bottom, it opens up into gravel and broken seashells.

We’d decided to meander through the shallows on our way out to the deeper Breakwater pilings (about a 270° heading from shore) where we would spend the majority of our dive. This was where we were told we could lie back and look up at a beautiful wall of plumose anemones. True to the site’s description, pretty quickly we could see the dark vertical structures rising ahead of us, mixed in with the occasional stipe of bull kelp (keep an eye out for it and don’t get tangled!). It wasn’t as eerie as I’d initially suspected it might be. In fact, it was beautiful. There was almost no current present, and a number of other critters began to make themselves known, including a flounder, a few young lingcod, sea stars, a few crab, and a number of rather fat sculpins.

We took our time here, looking up and examining the pilings thick with life. I had heard that they were among the structures intended to be removed as part of Washington State’s Creosote Piling Removal Program. I found myself wondering if there was any creosote left in these pilings as indeed, they had been in the water for many decades, and not just 10 or 20 years. Surely any remaining creosote would have leached out by now? And surely there was a way to test for it—a simple wood core that could be examined in a lab? The thought of all the life that would be lost by removal, even if as much as possible could be transferred onto other structures, was sobering and I felt suddenly as though I were moving through the ruins of an old cathedral, about to be dismantled.

Unfortunately, my buddy and I missed spotting the remains of an old barge that was supposedly right alongside the most easterly pilings (the ones facing into the middle of the channel). I don’t know if it was covered with seaweed, but after checking out the pilings that pointed into the channel, we took a north-facing heading and moved with the slight current to the bottle field. Finding bottles does mean lifting seaweed here and there, but even then it wasn’t too hard and in short order, we’d found a bottle from the 1950s—a Squirt Soda Pop glass bottle. Unfortunately, on the way back to shore, I accidentally dropped it. I have no doubt some other diver will find it and enjoy the history!

The one thing I completely forgot about before diving Titlow, was that there is a map of this site on the Perfect Dive. You can find the map here. It’s very helpful for familiarizing yourself with the site before you dive, though you don’t really need it unless you intend to dive the ledges or the bottle field. Even then, most points of interest are pretty shallow—within the 30-35 feet depth range.

The ledges were the part of the site that I did not manage to see on this hour-long dive. You can see from the map above that they extend more to the south. I’d definitely want to dive that section on a low exchange just so I had enough time to be comfortable. I’ll be sure to report back on those once they’ve been thoroughly investigated. I hear there are a few Giant Pacific Octopus and wolf eels living in caves carved in the ledges.

Where to park and other amenities

The nice thing about this site is that there’s parking close by that’s also free. There’s also a public toilet in the park and a place to rinse off your gear/shower basically as you get out of the water. Be careful crossing the train tracks to get to the beach entry though. Trains run frequently here.

If you’ve dived this site and have any tips to add, be sure to leave a comment or send me an email via the contact form.