Sea Dragon Charters 28/10/2018

I went out on a fun Sunday dive with Sea Dragon Charters. I had not been out to the Annapolis in quite a while, and had to miss the big GUE-BC trip out the previous day. I met up with Brian and a new dive buddy Terry from Alberta for a fun day of diving. Captain Bob was in charge along with Gavin.

We did the Annapolis first, and it was Terry's first time. I was able to give him the full tour, starting from the hangar bay, to the bow, to the stern, around the smoke stacks and done. Unfortunately the visibility was not the best, but we did see a lot of life. I noticed a lot more sea stars and nudibranchs than I had in the past. Also there were quite a few larger rockfish.

For the second dive, we had Captain Bob take us over to the wall to the east. My goal was to try and find the wolf eel that was there. Alas, it wasn't to be. The wolf eels eluded us. However, the visibility was a bit better and we had a very good dive. We spotted a lot more nice nudibranchs, with a golden dirona being the prettiest (it was Brian's find).

We met up at the Troller Pub in Horseshoe bay after for some snacks and conversation. It was a great day of diving!

Guiding Local Dives 12-15/10/2018

Some great cross-pollination happened this weekend. First off, David Watson (whom I had met at the GUE conference) came up from California and I took him and Aron Tremble on a tour of Porteau Cove. Then Heison Chak (whom I had also met at the Conference) contacted me to act as a dive guide to his old friend Dicky Leung, who had only ever dove fresh water. All of them got a great exposure to what the beautiful waters of BC have to offer! It was also a great excuse to take two days off of work.

A great group photo of myself, Dave and Aron at Porteau.

Me playing tag with a ling cod.

A photo of Dicky and myself at Whytecliff.

A great picture of an encounter with a seal sunning itself on a rock (look closely).

And a happy diver!

Key West Florida 07/09/2018

Florida reef diving was always fun and relaxing. Heather and I were down in Key West for vacation, and fit in a day of ocean fun with Captain's Corners. Leslie was great getting us booked in, and the boat crew of Levi, Amanda and Jen were excellent. The fresh water hose on board for rinsing was amazing!

There had been a recent tropical storm, and the visibility really hadn't recovered yet. It wasn't bad, maybe 20 to 30 feet, but it could have been worse! We had been looking at the normally crystal clear water with some trepidation. The weather however was perfect. Not too rough and not too hot.

Our first dive site was Eastern Dry Rocks. It was a set of shallow reef fingers. I was able to try out a new travel sized wing, and a new 3mm wetsuit. Both worked a treat. We saw quite a few things. The highlight was all of the reef fish, and the discovery of some underwater treasure. A relatively new cell phone was sitting on the bottom in a protective case. It must have been dropped very recently as nothing was growing on it and I donated it to the boat crew. My pocket shorts came in handy to store it while we finished the dive. The pocket shorts looked dumb, but they worked!

The second dive on Rock Key was the best dive of the day. We saw a spiny lobster, green moray eels, groupers, spiny urchins, moon jellies and lots of pretty reef fish. I saw some kind of green insect too.

The coral health seemed OK as well. Not amazing but not bad, which was good to see.

On the whole, a fun day! I would highly recommend using Captain's Corners.

And finally, a short video...