Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Ansell Place 17/11/2009

I had wanted to dive Ansell Place for a long time. It was another dive site along the Sea to Sky Highway, and a map link is here:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Ansell+Pl,+West+Vancouver,+Greater+Vancouver+Regional+District,+British+Columbia&sll=49.891235,-97.15369&sspn=42.090987,89.560547&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FSzC8QIdFF-n-A&split=0&hq=&hnear=Ansell+Pl,+West+Vanco

It doesn't look like much, but underwater it was pretty nice. The problem was getting into the water! Everyone I talked to said that it was hard. During low tide, the exposed rocks covered with algae made it difficult to get to the water. There were quite a few steps to go down, too, as well as an unstable drop down onto the rocks. Erosion had made this drop worse. There was a rope hanging beside it to help you. Maybe ropes made people more nervous? It was just a few feet! It wasn't a mountain or anything.

Alan Johnson agreed to dive Ansell with me, and it was even more exciting because some new wolf eels had been spotted here. Our mission was to find them.

Thank goodness we chose Tuesday to go diving instead of Monday. The rain had been incredible all weekend, and Monday night was worse. Tuesday morning was beautiful though. It was almost clear and sunny and the temperature was fairly warm too. It was a great day for a dive!

When we arrived at Ansell Place, we took a quick walk down the steps to the water to check things out. I'd never been, and Alan had not dove the site for at least a year. Things looked pretty good. The stairs were slippery, but the water was near high-tide so the entry would be easier. Still, there were quite a few waves coming in, so we'd be thrown about a bit once we got in, but it was manageable. We got set up and joked a lot about Kelvin Grove and how maybe the people of Ansell Place would try to enact a bylaw banning naked, cursing, peeing, nuisance divers.

We got in the water with no issues, did a quick gear check and started down. The plan was to go to 25m as fast as possible and start looking for the wolf eels. The visibility was terrible! Most likely due to all the recent rain and runoff. Good thing we had our powerful cannister lights, so that we could stay together easier. There was not a lot to see since you really couldn't see far. It looked to be a fairly nice wall, and in better water it would be quite nice.

We came across a log sitting perpendicular to shore in a rock crevice, and soon after that (about 3 minutes total into the dive) we found a wolf eel. It was under a really large rock in a crevice that hardly looked like it could contain such a big creature. It was at least 4 feet long, and it's head was close to a foot up and down. It was really ugly! But extremely cool. We sat peering at it for about 15 minutes, trying to coax it out of its den. The wolf eel was having none of that though. It moved around inside, and kept staring out at us, but it wouldn't budge. There was also a copper rockfish and a big ling cod hanging out around the rock, along with a bunch of gobbies. Alan tried to take some photos, but the eel was too far back in the hole. Our lights easily penetrated and we could see it fine, but it was too far for the camera to get a decent shot. Eventually, we gave up and headed back.

On the ascent, Alan pulled a simulated out of air emergency, to see if I was on my toes. I did pretty well, and got him onto my regulator, but I forgot to do the follow up steps after that. Not crucial, since he was breathing, but not 100%. Anyway, I finished those last steps off, and we swam around for a bit sharing air and finished off the ascent.

All in all, a really good little dive. Wolf eels stay in one place for a while, so now I can go back and show him to others!

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