Things my wife and I learned about shore diving

1. Rocks... lots of them. From very big to very tiny, they are annoying and painful. We bought full foot fins split fins because they were much more affordable than the strapped kind. We quickly learned that neoprene socks do not provide enough padding to walk on the dreaded rocks. The solution: I placed a zip tie around the elastic of each one of our water shoes with enough slack to form a loop. I then bought a double sided long clip from my dive shop and placed it on the lowest BCD D-ring. We would walk into the water with our water shoes, take them off, put the fins on, then clip the shoes to our BCDs. Once clipped, we would tuck them in our BCD waist band so they were out of the way and wouldn't drag. When we were done with the dive, we just did the reverse.
2. Weight belt. My wife and I were very excited to have weight integrated BCDs. For the first two days we struggled to get our very heavy BCD/tank/regulator/integrated weights on our backs and navigate the rocky terrain and long walks until we got in the water. By the time we got there, we were exhausted. Much too much work before the dive even started. Once in the water, we loved the weight integration. Getting out was another tiring ordeal. The last couple days we switched to a weight belt. The walkout was much better switching the weight from our shoulders to our waist and at the end carrying the weight belt in our hand made the whole process much more enjoyable. Leave weight integration for the boat, weight belt for the shore.
3. Tarps are awesome. Use it to protect your rental car seats and trunk.
4. Snorkeling. Expect long swim outs in some of these placed, snorkeling will make the time pass quicker.
5. Assemble your gear at the dive shop and transport it assembled. That way if you have a long drive you can just jump out of the car, throw your gear on and dive, plus you are at your freshest when assembling and testing it. Make sure that you lay your tank down when transporting it and do not pinch your hoses.
6. Take a cooler with drinks, I mean water!
7. Watch for fishing lines and boat lanes. If in doubt, deploy a buoy.
8. This is for the newbies out there. If the water is warm, then cold, then warm, then cold, etc it's more than likely a current. It can happen in as little as 10ft of water and can change rapidly, like when you swim out and back.