I had been kind of sad that I hadn't been able to get out diving before now. It was not for lack of trying, though! As a small consolation, the past Sunday I visited the Vancouver Aquarium for the Scuba Diver days, where lots of people from the dive industry had come for a trade show thing. It was pretty fun, and I was able to work on some of my marine identification skills with the specimens in the tanks. A good thing too, because I saw something on this dive that I wouldn't have recognized otherwise!
Vince and I decided to go to Porteau Cove. I had not dove Porteau at night before, and was excited to see what might be different. It wasn't a bad evening, either. It wasn't raining, the moon was almost full and it wasn't that cold. The water temperature was 7 degrees, but it didn't feel that bad. The tide had gone out completely, so it made the usually arduous surface swim much shorter since we could walk out quite a ways. It also made the depths a lot shallower. Instead of 15-20 meters, it was only about 10. That also made it a lot more forgiving on gas consumption, so we were able to stay down quite a bit longer (51 minutes).
It was kind of choppy though, and the wind was relatively strong. The surface swim had us bouncing up and down with the waves. Visibility didn't look good, but once we were down it wasn't bad. We could see at least 20 feet or so.
Once we descended, we basically just puttered around the barge wreck and the pipe reef and jungle gym. There was a lot to see, so that area was plenty. We didn't circle the Grant Hall, but did swim alongside its starboard side.
Either I was getting better at noticing marine life, or there was a tonne of life. I think it was a combination of both, because I saw a lot! The highlight were three sailfin sculpins. I never would have recognized them if I had not seen them in the aquarium on Sunday. They were very interesting with the long plume coming off of their heads. There was also a big buffalo sculpin resting on a girder. He was hard to see due to his impressive camouflage. I am pretty sure it was a buffalo sculpin, but it could also have been a great sculpin. Underneath one of the concrete blocks the lair of the resident giant pacific octopus awaited. He was home today, but stuffed way back in the hole so all you could really see was a sucker covered tentacle. He did seem to be getting bigger! Must have been all those tasty crabs. There were lots and lots of graceful decorator crabs hanging off of all manner of things, their claws outstretched ready to snag unsuspecting tidbits. They did not look like this picture at all, since they all used different things to adorn their shells. These ones were more red, too. I am sure I saw a hairy crab as well clinging to a rock. On the swim back to shore, there was a large dungeness crab, as well as a red rock crab. Schools of shiner perch were swimming around too. There was also a puget sound rockfish. It was small and yellow, and I'm pretty sure it was one of these. It could have also been a kelp perch. I'm not sure! I'd not seen these little yellow fish before. The more I think about it, the more I think that it was indeed a kelp perch since it wasn't in a school, but alone. There was also the usual abundance of small and large lingcod, all of them snoozing on the bottom or on a rock. There were quite a few kelp greenlings too. On one concrete reef portion I swear I saw a mossy chiton . Identifying chitons was very hard, though. The picture in my marine life book seemed very similar to what I saw, but this photo wasn't much like it.
On the swim back on the sandy bottom, I am sure I saw a Pacific snake prickleback and a starry flounder. Of course, there were lots and lots of orange and white plumose anemones covering everything. Some had fallen off of what they were clinging too. I can only assume they got dislodged by other divers, or by wave action. I'm not sure. A final hightlight was spotting a Hudson's dorid clinging underneath an overhang. It was super cool!
Even though I got home very late, this dive was worth it. I'd certainly recommend checking out Porteau Cove as a good destination for a night dive any day.
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