Sunday, March 9, 2014

Topline 08/03/2014

For my birthday, I could not think of anything better than going for a dive with Heather and Sea Dragon Charters! There was a rain warning, but that was much better than the snow warnings we had been getting lately.

Kevin and relatively new skipper Chris were captaining the boat, and Mike was dive master. On board were Aquarium personnel who were doing the annual ling cod egg mass survey. There was also a BCIT journalism student who was doing an audio story on the event. The Sea Dragon had a deal that if you participated in the survey you could get one fill for free! Not a bad trade to help science.

The first dive we did was at Dorman Bay near Bowen Island. We got a dive briefing from the Aquarium staff about what to look for to help the survey. You had to just mark down the depth, the size, and the security of the egg mass, and whether a male was present. Ahmed had told us a story of him getting accosted by a ling cod recently. I knew they could be aggressive when they were guarding their eggs, but I had not heard of one actually bumping into a diver before. During the first dive, we found two ling cod egg masses. We also saw two really nice tanner crabs that were holding females (lots of things were mating obviously). We found a fantastic giant nudibranch, and were treated to its unique hunting behaviour. When it found a tube-dwelling anemone, it would rear up and dive down at it. It was a fantastic and lucky treat. I found an oar from a rubber dingy and pretended to row underwater a bit as well. Check out the video that Heather took!



We got some still photos as well. There was a great nudibranch, a Golden Dirona.


There were some fantastic plumose anemones.


The best shot, was some kind of sponge or tunicate that we'd never seen before. It was small, so maybe we'd just missed them.


For the second dive, we did Halkett Wall. Ahmed and I both thought that we are on a completely different island. We thought we were on Hutt Island. Whoops! The dive was a lot of fun, but we didn't see one ling cod.

After the diving, we all met for some food and drinks. Here, we had a great opportunity to chat with Chris about the Cayman Islands, and Patricia and Andre, whom we had met that day. It was a great time!

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