Sunday, May 27, 2018

Porteau Cove 05/27/2018

Vlad and I went out for a very fun scooter dive at Porteau Cove. The tide was way out, so that introduced some challenges, but it certainly was a great day for a dive.


Our plan was to take a compass bearing to the Nakaya, spend some time there,then scooter back into the main areas of the marine park.

Scootering out went well, although the visibility in the first 6 meters was pretty bad. We almost ran into the cement blocks of one of the artificial reefs. But the bearing we took was true and we hit the concrete block buoy for the Nakaya as planned. But, the extreme low tide played a trick on us and we missed the Nakaya itself. It took a bit of searching back and forth a bit, but we found it.

The visibility past 6 meters was pretty good. We stowed our scooters and did a leisurely kick around the whole wreck. It was still doing pretty well, and was surprisingly intact. Some of the wood was very spongy. There was a set of floating cables and line off to the port side which I didn't remember. There were several Northern Feather Duster worms growing on the cables, along with quite a few plumose anemones. There wasn't a lot of line tangled there, but it could get cleaned up at some point.

I noticed a tiger rockfish living on the starboard side. It retreated too quickly when I called Vlad over to see. There were hundreds of juvenile yellowtail rockfish all over.

After finishing up with the Nakaya, we headed back. Again the extreme low tide hindered us, because we scootered back too "deep" and missed everything. Basically we needed to be at least 30 feet shallower. The poor visibility didn't help ether.

But the run back was fun anyway. We came across a stubby squid egg mass sitting out in the open on the sand, several juvenile lion's mane jellyfish, and a bunch of golf balls!

When we surfaced, we were treated to the Coast Guard hovercraft doing drills on the nearby beach.

A lot of fun!


Neck Point 03/24/2018

Heather and I took a break from the Big City and took a relaxing mini-vacation to Vancouver Island. We stayed at the Englishman River Resort in a log cabin, had camp fires, and just generally had a good time. We did get out for one dive at Neck Point, and it was a lot of fun.

We found the "Tower of Neck Point Bay" (a log that was somehow upright on the bottom)


A whole mess of tube snouts.


Underwater gardens everywhere.


And generally good visibility.


We topped it all off with a campfire and marshmallows later that evening!