Welcome to Edmonds Underwater Park. Just below the surface, an underwater world is bustling with activity that parallels our life on land. The City of Edmonds, Washington, is built right on the Salish Sea. Main Street leads directly to the waterfront and Brackett’s Landing North. Our community flocks to the beach. It’s a source of joy and inspiration, and yet much of our understanding stops where the land meets the water. However, for us scuba divers, this is where our lives begin. We created this website and short film to share with our community what lives in our underwater backyard and why we love the Bruce Higgins Underwater Trails.

Edmonds Underwater Park is a no-take zone, meaning life is protected from fishing, crabbing, harvesting, and dredging. It’s a 27 acre marine protected area divers explore via an underwater trail system. A group of volunteers, led by Bruce Higgins, maintains an underwater playground for divers. Two and a half miles of underwater trails help divers navigate the park to explore sunken features. Boats and barges are overgrown with life, repurposed as a new habitat for hundreds of species. Giant lingcod lie in cleaning stations with their mouths wide open, waiting for symbiotic fish and shrimp to clean their gills. Eelgrass beds provide a nursery for juvenile animals like crabs. The beds also function to remove carbon from the atmosphere and protect shorelines from erosion. Jellies float by with the current, sometimes ending up in the arms of hungry crabs or giant plumose sea anemones.

In this film you will meet your ocean neighbors. From colorful nudibranchs to sea stars, schooling perch, and painted anemones, there’s so much life to explore. Using dry suits and cameras, our Dive Team documents the underwater world to give a voice to the ocean. We want to raise awareness about the amazing life that exists in our backyard and Edmonds, Washington. Many people ask us, “What do you see out there?” Here’s our answer! Check out the blog to read stories from our Dive Team or head over to the Ocean Life page to learn more about park species and ecosystems. Join Our Ocean And You community to receive newsletters and other surprises from Annie Crawley.

Life is abundant in the park because it is protected, and we must continue to preserve our ocean resources. Join our Dive Team to become a voice for the ocean. We need to raise our voices together and speak up for the ocean to preserve the marine life and resources we depend on. Live your life like the ocean is your next-door neighbor, because it is.