Sunday, October 24, 2010

Howe Sound Boat Dive - 23/10/2010

It was back out on the Topline with Jason and Vince this Saturday. Kevin and Jan were great hosts as usual!

The first site we visited was on the southern edge of Bowen Island. It was a new site to me, but I can't quite recall the name of it. We ended up passing it up since the conditions were not good there. The currents were not looking right to have a good dive.

Fortunately, Wolcombe Island was in the area, and we went there instead. I'd been there several times before, and it was usually a nice dive. On my first trip there, we saw a basket star. Wolcombe was apparently the only place in the Vancouver area where they could be found. However, since that trip, I've not seen a single basket star there. I suspect they have died out / moved on. So, if you want to see basket stars, get up to Port Hardy!

It was a pretty uneventful live boat drop, and we swam to the stick marker on the rock, did our checks, and descended. Our dive plan was to average 70 feet for half an hour then move up gradually for the rest of the dive. Jason was the limiting factor with a smaller gas supply, so we capped the dive to 50 minutes maximum. The wall at Wolcombe dropped to about a max of 80 feet, with a sandy bottom leaving off there. We didn't see anything too spectacular. The previous weekend many octopus had been reported here, but we didn't see any. The rock topography of Wolcombe was always interesting. But in terms of life there wasn't much of interest to be seen today. Or, we just missed everything! Well, there was a fairly large grunt sculpin which is always cool. I had my stage bottle out for practice again, and got some good stuff done. Managing the extra gear was getting easier. All three of us shot surface markers for practice at the end of the dive, and all that went well too.

From there, we got to pick where to go next. Hutt Wall was near, so we headed north to that. Jason and I hadn't been there in quite some time. Also, Mike the dive master on the boat said that there were two really huge cloud sponges at 60 feet there. Jason and I had missed them the last time we were there, so were anxious to see them. Mike also reported a northern spearnose poacher living under one of the sponges. I'd never seen one of those before, so was quite curious.

Since the sponges were at 60 feet, we decided to keep our dive plan to that depth. There was no way that we'd run out of no decompression time before Jason hit his gas limits, so that wasn't a concern. We estimated a 50 minute dive based on his gas consumption, and it turned out to be pretty accurate.

Descending down the wall was pretty murky at first. It also took a bit of swimming to get out from the rock far enough to actually get onto the wall itself. Somehow, Jason picked up a hitch hiker on the way. A feather star latched onto his arm, but eventually detached and dropped off. I found it quite amusing though. It took a bit of swimming to actually get to the could sponges. I almost started to think we missed them, but then there they were. They didn't disappoint. Both were close together and very large, at least the size of a small couch. One was half-dead though, shot through with brown. It's structure was still there, but both were not in good shape. It was too bad, but it was strange for them to be in such shallow water anyway.

Under the one sponge was indeed the norther spearnose poacher. It was very cool. Inside the sponges several grunt sculpins were making their home, along with many squat lobster. All in all, the sponges were extremely interesting and made this the best dive of the day. We continued on, and found several hairy crabs in various cracks, along with a very well camoflaged sculpin on a rock wall. Jason was looking at something right beside it and totally missed it. I wasn't quite sure what it was. Nothing in my marine book really looked right. I suspect it was a leister or buffalo sculpin. We also found a boot sponge filled with purple fish eggs. There was a kelp greenling near, so we thought it may have been greenling eggs. I also noticed a very nice painted greenling on the dive.

Hutt Wall was the high light of the day for sure! Afterward, we had some drinks at Ya Ya's in Horseshoe Bay. It was a pleasant end to a good day...

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