Dragon's Den and Route 66 11/05/2014

Heather and I went out on the Topline with Sea Dragon Charters on Sunday. Boy am I glad we did, the day was amazing! We visited two dive sites off Anvil Island, Dragon's Den and Route 66. Route 66 was on the east side of the island, and was a newly-discovered dive site. Kevin and Jan were both on board today, and reported that the visibility had been great lately. Some dive teams reported being able to see the boat hull from 60 feet. I had my fingers crossed!

If you'd like to see all the photos we took, check out this album:

https://plus.google.com/photos/+AntonNorth/albums/6012560478527193265

I can't go farther without first sharing the best octopus encounter we'd had in a long while. I will explain more later on!



The day started out cloudy and threatening, but the weather report was correct. It turned into a beautiful day. Here is a picture of the first dive site, Dragon's Den.

It was a treat going up to Anvil Island, because it was a bit of a long ride and often the weather and other factors meant it made more sense to go to sites closer to Horseshoe Bay. Not today though!

I put together a video compilation of both dives here. The first portion was with my GoPro camera. The rest is using Heather's Panasonic camera with Sola light..

Visibility was indeed excellent. There was a murky surface layer, but under 20 feet it opened up to at least 30 or 40 feet of visibility. There was a great portion of video with bubbles trailing up to the surface. On the Dragon's Den dive, we saw a lot of critters. There was a cute red fur crab inside a cloud sponge (and a squat lobster poking its claws out).

The Dragon's Den was so named due to the small caverns that were there. There were three of them, around the 70 to 80 foot depth. They extended back maybe 20 feet, and were more like big rock overhangs. The ceilings were covered will plumose anemones and tunicates and star fish. We discovered our bubbles would knock off the starfish, so a few times it was raining starfish! This photo showed kind of what the roof was like, with a little decorator crab front and center.

The plumose anemones around the Dragon's Den site were very pretty as well. Another decorator crab was hiding among them.

We had a nice relaxing surface interval in the stunning scenery of Howe Sound. I had to take the requisite panoramic shot!

For the second dive, it was Route 66 a site no one on the boat had done before. Kevin and Jan reported that when they found it, all the good life was around 60 feet. We couldn't wait to get started!

We spent our dive around 30 feet, and it was a good thing because about half way through, Heather spotted a nice sized giant pacific octopus taking a nap on a rock! You could tell it was a giant pacific octopus and not a red octopus because it didn't have paddle-shaped eyelashes under its eyes.

The octopus wasn't too thrilled to be disturbed, and put on its threatened display several times (changing its colour to white, and flaring out its mantle). We let him be as much as we could, but we weren't going anywhere until we got a good look! The video at the top of the page turned out really really well. The pictures of the threat display were also awesome.

Sadly we had to leave him behind and continue with the dive. The visibility was as good on this dive as the first. We saw a barnacle eating nudibranch, alone without its usual friends.

Decorator crabs were everywhere. Some of them were more decoration than crab!

There were a ton of sea squirts covering everything.

A small heart crab tried to escape from us by jumping off a rock, but we followed him and he finally sat still for this picture.

Coonstripe shrimp were everywhere on this dive. Near the end of the video, you can kind of see them running away from us.

Finally there was some strange tunicate that I had no idea about. It looked like it had something inside of it.

The day came to a close far too soon. But we capped it off with snacks and drinks on a patio in Horseshoe bay. Cant' wait for the next time we go out!

Dive Master 01/04/2014 - 04/05/2014

For a long time, I had thought about completing the PADI Dive Master course. Much of my time and training had since gone towards Global Underwater Explorers, but I liked the idea of having a very recognized accreditation like this. Many times I had gotten blank stares when I have said "GUE", but everyone recognizes PADI.

I felt that at this point in my diving career, I could with confidence say that I am a "dive master". There were other reasons as well, one of which was to remind myself of how most of the world dives. We all have to start out somewhere, and PADI was a good starting point for many (myself included). It would be good to review the system I learned to dive with, and be comfortable and knowledgeable in it again. That way I could "lead by example" and show people there are other ways to dive and why practice and skill was important.

All my training had been through the International Dive Center, and I also thought this would be a good opportunity to diversify and go through a different shop. I knew quite a few people who used Ocean Quest, and thought that Ken Dunlop would be just the kind of instructor I was looking for. I had known Ken for a while, and liked his easy-going attitude and practical approach to teaching. He seemed just the right mix of professional and fun. I had taken an Oxygen provider course through him one time, and I really enjoyed his teaching style. I hoped that one day I could be as good an instructor, if I went that way! During the course, Ken got his Platinum Instructor certificate (something like that) from PADI, for certifying I think over 250 students in a year. Quite an active guy!

Since I wasn't in a rush, I didn't have any specific plans on when to do the course. However, when Ken emailed me saying that he was doing a dive master course starting on April 1st, I jumped at the chance. The timing worked out perfectly. I chuckled a bit at starting on April Fools! Hopefully he wasn't joking.

I worked through the online material in a week or two. I was impressed with the quality of the material, which was definitely something that PADI does well. I did find a few mistakes with links to Project Aware not working, and it was crappy that you couldn't do the online portion on an iPad. The online portion was done in Flash, and unfortunately this was a poor choice, since many devices don't support Flash. The material relied heavily on audio and some video. Each section had it's own little quiz, and there was a bigger knowledge review later. I was frustrated in that for the quizzes, if you got a question wrong, you couldn't go back and correct it without doing the entire quiz again. Each quiz would not let you proceed until you got 100%, which was very annoying. There was a lot of material that I had forgotten about, mostly to do with specific PADI standards and ways of doing things. The legal section was dry but interesting, and it was a good review of the PADI tables. I think I liked the physics section most. It was quite good.

The first day of class was mostly paperwork. We all introduced ourselves, and it was nice to have a fairly small but diverse class. Ken and Amy were filling the instructor role, and the dive master candidates were Travis, Linda, Michael, Shawn, Holland and myself. Ken made a point of saying the new trend for PADI was to start emphasizing getting skills done while not kneeling on the bottom. I thought that was very nice to see.

The first pool session happened that weekend, and the first session was mainly going over the 20 skills. It was a long session in the pool, I was glad I wore a full 3mm wetsuit. Amy and Linda got extremely cold. The first dive was an hour and ten minutes, and the next one was half an hour. I had some real fun with the underwater gear removal as I didn't have a weight belt. I would remember that key piece of equipment next time! I don't use a weight belt any longer, and never thought that it might be required. I practiced skills a lot in the ocean, so that helped but the 20 skills were supposed to be done "demonstration" quality, so there was a lot of over-emphasis and small additions that you would normally not include when doing them. Not to mention that there were a few like the underwater gear-swap that were not included in GUE. I could see the value of introducing a complex task, but the practical application of it was next to zero. I wasn't complaining, I had fun. There was even some entertaining video of me attempting the famous "yoga" hover. I will stick to horizontal hover, thank you very much!

Amy and Ken took some video in the pool. I am the one in the full wet suit, with blue arms and black mask. Looking back, I should have focused on maintaining my usual buoyancy and trim. I remember many of the comments from Alan Johnson and Guy Shocky to keep striving all the time. Just because something wasn't a requirement doesn't mean you should ignore it!



There was also an opportunity for a group underwater picture. I am on the far left. From left to right: me, Travis, Michael, Linda, Shawn, Holland.

The next pool session was with actual open water students. Brian was the instructor that I worked with, along with Michael. Michael and I were lucky in the groups, sorry to everyone else! Brian had two students, Ryan and Daniel who were doing their drysuit checkout. The other two groups had only one student each. Talk about fighting for students! Since our group had two students, and two dive masters and one instructor, this meant that each of us had one student each. I was sure this would not be a luxury often encountered.

Brian's feedback to Michael and myself was positive. He farmed out skill demonstrations while he completed a skill with one student and the other dive master. We demonstrated and supervised mask flood, removal, regulator recovery, hover and participated in air-sharing. Brian said that our hand signals and demonstrations were slow and easy to see. For myself, I knew that the time spent reviewing this demo video that I had found helped a great deal.



I remembered more about skill exaggeration and added more reminder steps that I might have otherwise forgotten. I could see how easy it would be to forget all this stuff if you did not review. Brian's biggest comment was to always remember to be in good physical contact with a student at all times when mask skills are being done (and to be close at all times in general). Also you should be in good physical contact when the regulator was not in their mouth, and to have your alternate in-hand and ready to go into their mouth whenever the regulator was out of the student's mouth. Brian said this was good practice for instructor training, and just good practice in general. I know I completely forgot on several occasions to have a positive hold on my student. And not just a finger on a strap! While it was our responsibility to keep a student safe, if something happened the instructor would also be liable. So it was in the instructor's best interest to make sure you had a good hold, and had that alternate ready.

The other comment from Brian was to remember to give a student some lee-way to learn, especially on hover skills. There was a fine line on interfering by grabbing and keeping them down which ended up actually helping too much. Brian said (and I think Ken said the same thing) he would frequently let a student go, and motion for them to come back down and see what they would do. I could certainly see there was a lot of finesse involved in letting a student learn and practice, as opposed to hindering and doing it for them. No one could learn without a few controlled mistakes! I was impressed with Brian. He was an attentive and excellent instructor, in constant communication and kept things moving. He was business when it needed to be business, but fun. I was also impressed with my student Ryan. He understood his dry suit skills quickly, and was hovering horizontally very quickly. We spent a good session working on his breath control, and he was beginning to master it to move easily up and down in the water. I made sure to congratulate him and let him know his achievement, and could see a successful road ahead in his diving career. I know I learned a lot during this session as well.

The next class session had us doing physics, and it was a lot of fun. There were some dry parts, but on the whole it was good. Ken made some very good jokes.

We had an open water session next. The schedule had called for two days in the ocean helping supervise students, but the open water class had a rash of drop-outs, so there were only two students left, Ryan and Daniel. This meant that having 6 dive masters just wouldn't work! Ken split up the group into 3 on one day and 3 on the other. Michael, Shawn and myself did the first day. We couldn't have asked for a better day. Spring had definitely arrived! We all met at Ocean Quest first, and I made sure to give my condolences to Greg, whose mother had just passed away recently. We packed the van and headed to Whytecliff.

We went over a Dive Master briefing at the site, and got our gear together. Once the students were set up, I volunteered to give a site briefing. The first dive was just a dive, no skills. It turned out to be very challenging, as the visibility was extremely poor. I could see maybe 2 feet in front of me, and the students were churning up the bottom even more. Still, we accomplished the dive, and everyone stayed together.

After a very pleasant surface interval on the beach, we were back in the water for the skills portion. This time, it went a little bit worse. I ended up losing the group, and so did Michael. We regrouped on the surface, and found their bubbles and rejoined them, so we didn't lose them for long. It just went to show how bad the visibility was. At one point in the regulator recovery skill, Ryan reached back for it and smacked Michael in the face. I saw it all happen in slow motion, like a slap-stick comedy. It certainly didn't hurt, but was very funny to see.

Brian had some good feedback after. In such poor visibility, you had to get right beside the student so you could see them as well as the instructor. Brian's words were he'd rather need to tell you to go away than have to come get you. If you couldn't see the instructor you couldn't see signals or instructions. This was probably one reason why I lost the group, because I didn't know what the task at hand was. Even though the visibility was so bad, it was probably the best thing that could happen. Experiencing the worst case was definitely a way to learn some things!

After a class during the week, and the first part of the exam completed, we were out in the water again. This time we were at Porteau Cove again assisting instructors with open water divers. It was a pretty nice day, but a bit chilly. I was glad it wasn't raining! For the first dive, it was myself, Holland and Mike as the DM candidates, and Alexis for the instructor. She was taking 4 students out on a buoyancy dive. Two divers, Dave and Sarah were very new to diving and drysuits. They had learned in the tropics and fell in love with diving. Now that they lived in BC, they wanted to keep on doing what they loved. There were two teenage boys as well, whose names have escaped me. Visibility was a challenge again, since there was a lot of sediment stirred up. But we managed to find the fire hose and went for a short dive which was pretty good.

I learned the importance of awareness in big groups with low visibility again. You couldn't just focus on your student diver, but had to expand your awareness to include at the very least the instructor, and hopefully the other teams as well. My student Dave was very comfortable in the water, despite being very new to drysuits, so I was quite lucky. Our group had a weighting issue at the start with Sarah, emphasizing the importance of doing a good weight check prior to starting the whole group out. It was a nice day so sitting in the water wasn't a big deal, but you could imagine if it was poring rain and cold! Doing everything you could before hand as a DM to keep the dive going smoothly was very important. I'm sure it would start to become much easier over time, with practice.

For the second dive, there were two parts. A discover scuba part, and a rescue part. In the discover scuba part, Holland and I simulated a discover scuba open water dive. It went well, but was pretty artificial. Ken gave good feedback in that if your student looked comfortable, there was no need to hold on to them. If they looked uncomfortable, you should move in. Watching your student was very important too! I happily motored ahead, and Holland had a tough time leading the dive. Keeping in control of leading of the dive was important. Ken said this was a tough skill to master, because you couldn't let them get away from you, but you also wanted to give some freedom.

The rescue scenario had three big bits of feedback from Amy. One, slow down, two remember sequence, three, don't get so caught up in gear removal that you miss rescue breaths. Mike, Holland and myself all got frustrated during the scenario. The key to remember was that it was training. It was the time to take things slow, and think them through. Mistakes were ok, and there was no rush! This was the time to learn, not do it perfectly.

The next day, we were lucky enough to go out with Sea Dragon Charters, on the Topline with Captain Kevin and Chris. Ken arranged for a bunch of Ocean Quest side-mount divers to come out to give us some practice being DMs.

There ended up being a lot of good opportunities for learning. I think Ken even gave some groups private instructions to make our lives "interesting". Holland and I were paired with Arnie, Steve and Dave. We dove the east side of Bowyer island, on the wall there. Visibility was not bad, maybe 20 or 30 feet, but with a group of 5 it was definitely a challenge to keep the group together. We saw some great cloud sponges and boot sponges during the dive. I noticed Steve's SMB line spooling out behind him and could have entangled him. I went in and took it off, spooled it up and put it in my pocket. He ended up thinking he lost it, making me realize I should have made him aware of what happened, and gave it back at the time I fixed the issue. As Holland and I were on single tanks, we had less gas volume than our side-mount charges. So we signaled the rest of the team to keep going, and we began our ascent. The best part of the dive was in the last 20 feet. I found a nudibranch that I had never seen before, the Cockerell's Dorid. It was very small, so I might have just been missing them all this time. Anyway, I was quite excited to see such a colorful little critter. Here is a picture (not from me!).



Visibility was a challenge on the descent for the second dive. We got more separated than I liked. I lost Holland for a time, and was ready to tell the team to carry on and go search, when I saw he was back with us. One thing I learned on this dive was the importance of identifying something on every diver so you can recognize them. Also, I learned the importance of not getting confused when another group crossed your path. Making sure that your group doesn't get mixed up was very important!

For me, one of the biggest things I learned was that I was too passive on the dives. I needed to communicate more with the divers, and interact more. My problem was that I felt like I was interrupting their dives. But there was a difference between interrupting and just communicating. Diving dissimilar systems (single tank versus side-mount) was also a challenge.

The day was go go go from the start, because it was a big group and the Topline had a second charter that afternoon. We had to be back by 1pm, so there wasn't a lot of time for relaxing and chatting. We all did a very good job of keeping things going. It's too bad we didn't have more time, I would have loved to have switched up the groups for the second dive. But the time pressure was too much, and the simple task of "switching" up the groups would have been monumentous. Finally, there were 4 gear problems fixed during all of this. Ken fixed his rebreather, I had a leaking first stage, and there were two drysuit inflator hoses that needed to be swapped out. All in all, I don't think we could have packed more good experience into one day!

Our next and final dive for the official dive master course was a deep dive, a search and recovery dive, and a rescue dive. All this took place at Whytecliff Park on a Saturday. It was a long long day, we arrived at 7:30 am and were not finished until 3pm. Even though I got to the park at 7:30, there was already a group there. Once everyone arrived, we started putting together gear, and Ken gave a briefing. My group would be myself, Michael, and Fiona, with Amy as our instructor / videographer. Michael took a challenge to clip on an AL40 as a spare cylinder. The dive was to 100 feet for about 15 minutes, and during that, we had some task loading. At the start we recorded our depth, pressure and time, then at minute 15, did the same thing. This was used later to calculate our surface consumption rate for a dive of moderate effort. There wasn't a lot to see on the dive itself, because we swam across the bay which was all sand. We ended up swimming all the way across, and had to turn around lest we continued on around the second island. On the way back, we met up with the other group, and were careful to make sure that both groups didn't get mixed up. On the ascent, we did some stops along the way, and Fiona deployed her SMB. We also had an out of air situation, with Fiona simulating going out of air. All that worked out quite well. Amy commented later that we did pretty good. The stops took longer than planned, due to the SMB deployment, but that showed the effect of task loading.

Back in the parking lot, Ken went over the next dive. We did some knot tying practice, brushing up on the bowline, sheetbend, and clove hitch. Part of the dive would be to attach a lift bag to the object that we were to search for and recover. It took quite a while to get everyone on the same page with the search pattern. But once that was done, it went pretty well. Our group was to start at 30 feet and go shallower, while the other group would start at 10 and search deeper. The object was supposed to be in 20 feet. Our group would have found it right away if I had not taken us out at too much of an angle. Ken mentioned later that he saw our lights go past. Oops! Still, it worked out ok, because we finished our search and the plan was to surface after 20 minutes and see what the other group found. We did so, and saw their SMB so we swam over and descended and grouped up. The final task was to attach a lift bag to the object (a weight belt) using the knots we learned, and get it neutrally buoyant. This all went pretty well, but the visibility got pretty bad with the bottom being stirred up. After that was complete, Ken had Michael and myself do a quick scenario for Fiona because she needed to finish a requirement to supervise divers with an instructor. We did an air-share scenario, and a regulator recovery. During this, Ken had briefed me to simulate a "panicked" diver for Fiona to deal with, which I did and that all went well too. She was kind of surprised when the panicked diver stopped and motioned for the drill to be cut!

The final thing to do was get graded on an unconscious diver rescue. This also went well. I went slow, and focused on the sequence. By this time, it was nearing three in the afternoon. It had been a long day!

There were still some components to the course that needed to be finished, most notably the underwater map creation, part of the written exam, the swim test and demonstrating skills in the pool for evaluation. But, the open water portions were all complete. I figured in another month I'd have the actual certification card. So I'm going to finish this all off, and end this post here!

Nanaimo Wrecks 29/03/2014

Jim Dixon arranged a dive of the Nanaimo Wrecks with Sea Dragon Charters. Thanks Jim! I almost had to cancel the trip, however. The night before while picking up my cylinders, I stopped to run an errand. When I tried to start the truck, it was completely dead. I called Heather and she helped me jump start it, and I was able to get it into Canadian Tire just in time. It turned out to be the battery, and that had to be replaced. Pretty good, since the battery in the truck was the original one. Lucky as well that it failed the night before, and not when we were trying to drive onto the ferry! I counted it as lucky anyway...

Vlad and I planned for the 630 am ferry, so we had to get up very early. The weather report was for rain all day, so it looked quite dismal. The ride over was uneventful, and we planned our dives. We were going to do two tech dives, expecting the first one to average 36 meters, and the second to average 33 meters. We had brought our scooters, and decided to use them for the second dive.

Once over on the island, we met up at the Marinaside resort. Glen and Christine were already on the Sea Dragon, and Drew and Damien were there already too. Jim and Greg arrived soon after and we started getting things loaded onto the boat. Mark had been scheduled to go, but had to cancel unfortunately. This meant that we had a nice number on the boat, and it wasn't too crowded.

Even though the weather report was not good, it did end up cooperating pretty well. It rained some, but when we needed it to stop, it did (on the surface interval for example). The sun even peaked out a few times!

Due to the unsettled weather, we weren't even sure that we'd be able to dive the wrecks at all. Glen took us out around the island, and we checked it out. Thankfully it wasn't too bad. There were swells, but it was doable. We tied up on the Cape Breton first. On the dive, Vlad and I decided to run a line and do a short drop down through the skylight. We checked out the engine room, and it was good fun. Vlad took some photos, and they are here.

For the deco, I was looking forward to trying out my new Thermulation heated vest. I pulled out the wireless controller and clicked it on. After a few minutes, I didn't feel any different. I tried the higher setting, and still nothing. I was convinced that I had made a poor purchase! But back on the boat, I realized that I had the remote too far away from my body. The unit would vibrate when it was activated, and on the dive I thought that I just couldn't feel it. Two things I learned: you definitely could feel the buzzing, and you really could feel the heat! Jim and Greg both said they had similar initial problems. It was an easy fix, and boy was it nice having the vest on. I kept it on low for most of the surface interval as well.

For the surface interval we pulled in behind Snake Island where it was calmer. The rain stopped and the sun even came out. The Sea Dragon provided some yummy quesadillas, and we watched the seals sun themselves on the rocks.

For the second dive, we visited the Saskatchewan. Vlad and I took our scooters and had a great tour of the ship. We circled it at least twice, and also scootered through the hull via one of the cut-outs. We saw one mother of a ling cod near the bow, making its lair where the hull met the bottom. We checked out the bow and the guns, and a gash in the hull near the bow. We couldn't figure out how the gash could have happened, other than during it's journey to the bottom. Vlad spotted a huge cabezon, but before he could call attention to it, it swam off into the depths quickly. It did not want any attention, that was for sure. For this deco, I made sure to turn on my vest. I felt it made a big difference. I had it on the middle heat setting, and that seemed quite comfortable. Because we were doing a repetitive tech dive, the deco for the second dive was just as long as the first, even though we were shallower and had a shorter bottom time. On our deco, Damien, Drew and Christine passed us on their ascent up, and we waved as they went by. The scooters helped on the deco as well, making it quite easy to stay in position near the line with very little effort. Vlad had made a comment a few days before, you really wanted your scooter on every dive once you got used to i.

The day came to an end too quickly, and soon we were motoring back to Nanaimo to catch the ferry. Again the weather cooperated with the rain holding off. We soon got the boat unloaded and were on our way, saying our good byes. Vlad and I had an interesting experience with BC Ferries when we declared our "dangerous goods". They actually requested to inspect them. When they did, they said that they had to check if the cylinders needed to be upright! I was quite surprised, as anyone who transports scuba cylinders knows that having them lying down is much more secure. The BC Ferries person checked the regulations and told us that indeed they just had to be secure. And since I had them all tied down, we were good to go. However, I was a bit worried for a while, thinking we'd have to re-pack the entire truck. We figured later that the regulation of standing cylinders must apply to the large commercial gas cylinders. Having incidents like this made me second guess declaring anything at all, and I'm sure the same goes for a lot of divers. It was too bad, because if I was BC Ferries, I'd make it a heck of a lot easier for divers to declare what they actually have, and not give them such a hard time. However it must be a very limited issue.

But, once again, another great day of diving!

Senanus Scooter Dive 15/03/2014

Greg Nuttal had talked about this dive a few times to me. I was quite excited to finally get to do it! He posted the event on the GUE BC Groupspaces site here. I would highly recommend doing this dive to anyone who has a scooter and the skills/experience to do it. It was a neat dive using the advantage given by scooters to better effect. Most of the dives I'd done with scooters had not really required them. This dive wasn't feasible without one (or a boat), so it was good to see a return on the investment we had put into them! Greg made a funny comment that this dive was "free" because there was no boat charter cost. That only made sense if you disregarded several thousand dollars of scooter equipment!

Vlad got some pretty good video of the dive. I could see why it was a popular dive site, the sponges were beautiful.



I found the Senanus Island dive on the UVic Scuba Site. Normally this dive was done on a boat, or alternately a dive kayak. Personally I'd never heard of anyone I know using a dive kayak, so usually it was a boat. Some further research showed that Senanus Island was traditionally used by the Tartlip native band as a burial ground, and that access to the island was restricted. Thankfully we were visiting only the underwater portion.

The dive plan was a bit more complicated due to the scooter component. The entry was Henderson Point, a popular diving spot at the end of Senanus Drive (a map reference of the actual dive site). Looking at the Henderson Point link, you can see both the entry point and Senanus Island (make sure to enable satellite view to see the island). The distance between the two is about 850 meters, or just under a kilometer. Mark Gottfried was along for the dive, and had done it many times. He told us a story of when he tried to do the dive years ago by swimming before scooters were readily available. He said it was amazing how close things looked, but in reality were very far away! Needless to say, the moral of the story was don't try to swim to the island.

The plan was to set a bearing for the lighthouse/cement factory and travel via scooter at ~9 meters for ~18 minutes, surface, take another bearing for the return trip, and descend to the Seananus Wall sponges. The bottom time was planned at about 30 minutes, and our average depth was expected to be 39 meters. The decompression would be done "on the trigger" while scootering back to Henderson pt. The compass bearing for the first leg was 230 degrees, and the return bearing was about 20 degrees. Because scootering on the surface would be unsafe, this dive also tested your underwater navigation skills. The trip across was in mid-water, so there were no landmarks and you had to trust in your compass completely.

Vladimir and I formed one team, and Greg and Mark the other. Originally Shawn Buttle was supposed to come, but he had to cancel. He did come out to say hi, because he had cylinders for Mark. Great support team, Shawn!

Vlad and I did pretty well on the first leg of the dive, although we were off to the left quite a bit when we surfaced near Senanus. Vlad had a compass mount for his scooter, and I realized after holding my arm in front of me for 20 minutes that it would be a sound investment to finally get a compass mount as well. We regrouped near the lighthouse on Senanus, verified our return bearing and started the dive. There was a wreck of a small boat near where we descended that Greg had found previously. It gave a good reference on where to start the trip back.

The dive on the wall was excellent. We did the dive without scooters for two reasons. One was to be sure to maintain adequate battery reserve for the trip back in case of a scooter failure, and the other was that it was better to go slow to view the sponges properly. The visibility was quite good and the sponge formations were nice and intricate. I remember seeing a particularly nice tiger rock fish as well, hiding out near one of the rock formations.

On the trip back, Vlad and I ended up being off to the right by quite a bit this time. It really showed that on long trips underwater, if you were off by a little it equaled quite a ways at the end of the trip. Fortunately it didn't take too long to regroup back and Henderson.

Mark had to leave after the first dive, but Greg, Vlad and myself went out for a second recreational dive. Greg and Vlad did some bottle rotation practice, and I did some gas switching practice. Greg also took us on a little tour of Henderson looking for octopus, but we didn't find any. We checked out the wreck of the small boat, and the fake skeleton that was still affixed there was in poor shape. All that was left was his leg. There were many White Lined Dirona nudibranchs around, and they were very pretty. Greg showed off his knowledge of the dive site, hitting all the landmarks bang on. Understandable considering he has probably dove Henderson a hundred times, I'm sure!

All in all, I was not disappointed by this dive trip. Thanks for setting it up Greg! It was definitely worth getting up at 4am for! I can't wait to come over and do it again!

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!

Whytecliff 04/02/2014

Unfortunately, all my dive plans since the sea lions were cancelled due to snow. The weather in Vancouver had been very abnormal. While it was not a lot of snow, it was enough for me to not want risking slippery rocks, or more importantly, slippery roads. I had not bothered to put winter tires on my trucks, and wouldn't you know, we ended up with more snow this year than ever before!

Vlad, Dave Williams and myself headed out to Whytecliff for the relaxing technical dive that we had cancelled 3 times due to weather. During the day, I saw some snow flakes, and I really thought we would be cancelling again! Thankfully, the snow was short lived and it was just rain for most of the day. It was wet and miserable gearing up, but when we got out of the water, the rain had stopped. It turned into a very nice evening. Jim Dixon had planned to join us, but forgot his apartment keys so had to go back to the Island. Too bad!

The dive itself was one that we had done many times before. We spent 10 minutes going right from the Cut at 45 meters, then turned around and came back at 39 meters for the remaining 20 minutes. This placed us right at the Day marker, where we started our decompression and moved into the bay.

During the dive, we saw a lewis moon snail, which was very unique. I had only ever seen these on Vancouver Island. This specimen was much smaller than the ones that I had seen before, and we almost missed it. It was about two inches in diameter. We saw some some very cool gunnels, probably saddleback gunnels, and some pretty interesting sculpins. The varitey of sculpins never ceased to amaze me. The cloud sponges were great to look at as usual. Vlad scarred a kelp crab that took a leap off of a rock overhang and he dropped off into the abyss. I hope he was ok! There were a ton of nudibranchs as well: a Giant White Dorid (it was huge, at least 8 inches), a Cooper's Dorid, a Yellow Margin Nudibranch, a Heath's Dorid, or possibly a San Diego Dorid. I found this page for all these nudibranchs, because it was too dark to take photos or video:

http://emeralddiving.com/id_nudibranchs.html

Visibility was not bad, maybe 20 or 30 feet. We ran into some strong current near the end of the dive, and I was worried that we'd not make it to the day marker in our planned dive time. But we came across a plaque that marked the location right when we hit the end of our dive. The water temperature was quite cold. All of us commented on that at the end of the dive. Dave dropped his mask and didn't realize it on our exit at the beach. He went back and found it in the water, saving it from getting washed away. Along with that, at the beginning of the dive, we had staged our deco bottles on the beach and they almost got washed away as well. The tide came up much faster than we had realized! Fortunately we were able to rescue them and put them up farther out of the water's reach. A good lesson to remember, make sure your gear was far enough away from waves or tides!

On the whole, it was a great dive. Can't wait for the next one!

Hornby Island Sea Lions 01/02/2014

I was very excited about this! Jim Dixon arranged via GUE-BC a trip to visit the Hornby Island sea lions, with Sean of UB Diving. Neither Heather or myself had done this dive before, and had heard a lot about it. We had seen sea lions occasionally, most notably at Egmont last October, where Francois took some great photos. However, these sea lion encounters were pretty far away, and you would be very lucky to get even a little close to them. For this trip, we just squeaked on. There was one slot left, but Jim talked to Sean and was able to squeeze both of us on. Whew!

Prior to the trip, we viewed some video of what to expect, and talked to those who had done it before. When we were talking after the trip, we agreed that neither of us were truly prepared for the experience. It was amazing, but a bit overwhelming! The shear number of sea lions and how interactive they were was a lot to take in. You really needed to be relaxed, and in control of yourself. We enjoyed ourselves immensely however, and Sean was a great Captain, with a great boat. We would definitely go out with him again.

Without further ado, the video!



Along with the video, there was a good collection of photos as well:

https://plus.google.com/photos/103220399355688115810/albums/5976086935921412113

We stayed overnight at the Tigh-Na-Mara resort in Parksville, so we were quite close to the meeting place, which was near the Fanny Bay ferry. Dennis and Alison came over on the ferry, so they had to get up much earlier. I'm glad it wasn't us! When we arrived, this was a view of the dock:

The people who came along were Jim, Alison, Dennis, Mark, Anton, Ksenia, Diane, myself and Heather, and a non-diver, Logan (Jim's son). It took me until part-way through the day to make the connection that Logan was the son that Jim had told me about before. Oops, sorry Logan and Jim!

When we arrived at the dock, we were greeted by a cacophony of sea lion barking. It was almost deafening. We joked that we could just do the sea lion dive at the dock. Our first look at the sea lions was a bit sobering. They sure were big!

It didn't take long to get the boat loaded and underway. I had not met Sean before, and he was a great skipper. He had planned to dive with us, but realized he had forgotten his undergarment so he was relegated to captain only on this trip. Too bad!

On the ride out, Sean explained how the channel narrowed and amplified the swells. He wasn't kidding. Many of us had our teeth rattled and spines compressed, even though he was going extremely slow. Sean also talked a bit about the geoduck farming he did sometimes. Later, on the way back, he told us about a dive site nearby that he would do in bad weather called Wolf Eel Alley. There was a particularly friendly wolf eel that lived there that Sean had helped nurse back to health, going out and feeding him periodically after it suffered an injury. This lighthouse was a cool landmark on the way, situated on Chrome Island.

The sea lion dive wasn't actually on Hornby Island, it was on Norris Rock that was very near by, and not far past the lighthouse. When we arrived, there was already a dive boat there, and Sean cruised past to give everyone a good view of the colony on the way to our anchor point. There were so many sea lions! You could get an idea just how many from the start of the video above and from the pictures. The smell was quite something as well!

When we were cruising by, hordes of sea lions jumped into the water immediately and started following us. Clearly they were very excited! I started to get a feeling for just what we were in for at that point. Sean had a tough time getting a good anchor point as the current and wind were not cooperating. We did finally get into a good position, and he gave a dive briefing.

The dive itself was very simple, and very shallow. Our average depth didn't go much more than 30 feet. Sean gave us one tip if we were mobbed by the sea lions, to pick up a rock and bash it on the bottom. It sounded like a good idea, but I'd soon find out that it only worked once, and for not very long!

It was dive time, and the sea lions were waiting. We did a back-roll entry off the boat which was always fun! Heather took this photo of me on the descent.

Then very quickly this was the next picture.

Followed by a view something like this!

It was incredible just how quickly you got dog-piled by the excited sea lions. For much of the dive, your view was something like this:

Like I had mentioned, nothing could really prepare you for just how interactive, curious, and down-right pushy the sea lions were. They would indeed bite you, but it was more like the way a child would explore things with their mouth. Lacking hands, that's all they had! While it didn't really hurt (much), it definitely could be uncomfortable. The worst was when they would bite your head. I had that happen to me several times, as did Heather. Even with dry suit hoods, it hurt! There was a particularly large male sea lion that Jim named "Cut-throat". You could identify him by his large size, lighter coloration and large scar around his neck. He must have been trapped in a piece of fishing net or line or plastic at one time. The Vancouver Aquarium had a video of the constant battle they had freeing these poor creatures from human carelessness. Cut-throat was a bit of a bully, and when he bit you, you felt it! He was particularly fond of your calf. Back to what I had mentioned about banging the rocks. I tried it once at the beginning of the dive, and yes, the sea lions scattered. But they were back seconds later, and from then on just ignored it. Not much help! Better to just keep calm and get near the bottom.

Even though we did our best to make sure that all our gear was secured properly, the sea lions still managed to undo Heather's waist buckle, as well as untie one of her drysuit boots. They certainly were mischievous! Here is one trying his best to undo some tank buckles.

Even though we were there for sea lions, eventually they did leave us alone and we got a chance to see some other critters too. Heather got some great photos, some of which are here.

A baby puget sound king crab:

A bigger, adult puget sound king crab. We thought to pick him up and put him somewhere more photogenic, but decided against it with all the sea lions around. I didn't think sea lions ate crabs, but better to be safe!

Some kind of limpet, which looked like a miniature ufo landed:

A leopard nudibranch.

An interesting picture of a red sea urchin (they were everywhere):

And finally a "green" nudibranch! Well, no, not a green nudibranch, but an anemone closed up. On the boat, Alison told a story about how she had seen a green nudibranch. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure this is what she saw instead, because I had never seen such a thing in the marine identification books. Sorry Alison!

There were too many good pictures from the trip, but here are a few of my favorites. Check out the album that has them all at the top of the page. Despite this being only her second dive with her new underwater camera, Heather got some great ones.

My newest dive-buddy!

Nom nom nom!

This was a great group shot of the sea lions.

All in all, it was one of the best dive experiences I've been on in a long time. I would highly recommend diving with sea lions to anyone. Just make sure you don't have anything dangling, are relaxed, and are ready to let the sea lions be in charge! Going out again with Sean and UB Diving was definitely in the cards as well.

One thing I forgot to mention. When we arrived back at the dock, and were taking stuff off the boat, Jim's hood fell overboard. Not a big deal because it would float, but then I noticed his mask was inside it. That definitely did not float and I watched it sink into the depths. Fortunately, we were divers! Since I had my drysuit on still, I slipped into my gear and did a quick recovery dive. Problem solved! The mask was sitting right on the bottom just under the boat.

Britannia Beach 26/01/2014

This turned out to be a very special day of diving! GUE-BC had embarked on a GUE Project Baseline for Britania Beach, amongst the other Project Baselines going on. The goal of Project Baseline was to provide "a baseline in which starting conditions such as water quality, water clarity, fish counts, living reef coverage, etc are compared to evolving conditions". Britania Beach provided an excellent location for this, due to the extensive mining operations that had been in the area. I found some information on the environmental impact of the mine site in this report: The Former Britannia Mine, Mount Sheer/Britannia Beach, British Columbia. You can see by this picture the quality of the water flowing into the ocean in 1995.

Josh Gardner started the project, and my first look at the site was through this video.

Britannia Beach Overview - CCGS Ready from Dirk De keersmaecker on Vimeo.

Today it showed just how much support the project had gotten in the GUE-BC community in Vancouver. On Vancouver Island, there had been much more activity, and it was great to see a similar thing happening on our side. There were at least 6 GUE divers participating directly in the project on Sunday, along with our 2 teams of 2. A full list of participants was Josh Gardner, John Campbell, Daniel Wei, Dave Williams, Nick Bowman (fabricator specialist!) Dennis Diamond, Rob Rob, Jim Dixon, Alison Clucas, myself and Heather. I am sure Josh will do a more complete write up of the work, but from what I saw the goal was to deploy permanent stations at specific locations where a visibility card was located. Then you could reliably quantify water visibility periodically. Luckily, Heather and I were there for a purely fun dive, so we didn't have to do any work at all! Jim was also along for a fun dive with our mutual friend Alison. We had not dove with Alison since Tuwanek 17/02/2013!

Even though Jim was on a fun dive, he was still roped into work! Here is Jim attaching the visibility cards to the stainless steel plaques.

A close-up of the visibility gauge that was put on the bottom:

You could not ask for a better day to go diving!

We all met at the Galileo cafe parking lot, and got a run down on the dive site. There were two entries, both requiring a trek across the train tracks. It was an interesting sight to see divers crossing the highway and the train tracks! The entry directly across from the cafe was pretty steep. The project teams entered from there, as it was closer. We opted to drive up the highway a bit toward Vancouver where there was a wide shoulder beside a billboard. There was a small trail under the billboard that led through the bush to a secluded "park". There was a tree house, a fire pit and it looked like it was regularly used. The entry here was quite a bit better, but there was more of a surface swim back to where the wrecks were.

After gearing up, we made our way into the water and on to the wrecks. The site was quite easy to find. All we did was surface swim along shore back towards Britannia Beach. At the first dock piling, we dropped down and followed the bottom contour at about 20 feet or 6 meters. We ran right into the wrecks easily. Along the way, we also found a huge amount of golf balls and a golf club! It appeared that this was a popular spot to practice your golf drive, although the person who lost their club in the ocean obviously needed some more practice!

You can find the video compilation I put together below. Most of the divers featured are Jim (in double 80s) and Alison (single 100 with yellow octo), but we met up with some of the other project teams as well. I think the best bits were the moon jelly we found, along with some of the schools of fish. The visibility was amazing! In the video, there was a great little three-man "conference" captured. John was using his wet-notes to tell people that there was a big octopus under the wreck were he was. We also heard a funny story from John later about deploying the stations. They used a small boat to take the stations out, which were made up of concrete blocks and stainless steel rods. John took one from the boat, and promptly rocketed to the bottom despite his wing. Those stations were heavy!

Heather took some great photos, which can be found in this album. Pretty good for her first attempt at underwater photography! There were some great nudibranchs (Cooper's Dorid I believe), as well as just awesome pictures of the wrecks themselves. There is one picture of a pipe fish, but you have to look very carefully. A few samples follow the link.

https://plus.google.com/photos/103220399355688115810/albums/5973433795456894657

All in all, the day was a fantastic success. It showed how much the GUE-BC community had grown in Vancouver, and also showed how divers of all skill-levels could participate, and above all, have fun! Britannia Beach was a great dive site. I wish I had dove it sooner!

Topline 25/01/2014

Vlad and I decided to go out for another dive with Sea Dragon Charters.We were planning on doing two technical dives, which meant a lot of gear! It was a pleasure to have the spacious Topline as our dive platform. Kevin and his crew were always excellent, and this time was no exception.

Here is the video compilation that I put together from the day. I hopped into the water to get some surface shots, and you can see just how great the visibility was! Vlad and I happened on a stubby squid, and a very photogenic moon jelly.



Arriving in the marina, the visibility from the dock looked stunning. We were tempted just to dive right there! Once on board, we headed to the north side of Bowyer Island for our first dive. I didn't get any video, but it was a very good dive. We came across some very large cloud sponges off the east side of the pinnacle. It showed that in Howe Sound, deeper than 100 feet, the cloud sponges continued to flourish. These specimens were about the size of an armchair.

Back on board, we had some nice soup and conversation. As we were doing two technical dives, Vlad and I requested a 2 hour surface interval. During that time, we had ample time to soak in the scenery.

The second dive was the best dive of the day, and the video above is all from the second dive. We came across a stubby squid, a moon jelly, many giant dendronotid nudibranchs, golden nudibranchs, and some great decorator crabs. The other dive teams reported octopus, and puget sound king crabs. I jumped in the water before the dive to film the other dive team leaping in, and that was a lot of fun. Without weights, a dry suit sure was buoyant!

A big thanks to Kevin and his crew for a wonderful day of diving!

Porteau Cove 14/01/2014

Vlad and I decided to go do a scooter dive at Porteau Cove. The tides again were not the best, but since we had the scooters, that wasn't such a big issue. It was quite a low tide, and it was still going out.

It was a very nice evening, however, no rain and a big full moon. We started the dive by scootering out to the first marker buoy and descending there. On the bottom, I picked up the firehose and we followed that, then went on towards the Nakaya. With the low tide, I adjusted the depth that we scootered to the Nakaya shallower. Unfortunately, I made it a bit too shallow and we missed it. We ended up at the rockpile near the highway. Realizing that, I turned us around and went a bit deeper on the way back. The Nakaya soon loomed in front of us, and we scootered around it a few times.

We headed back and scootered around the rest of Porteau a bit. There was not a great deal to note, other than a lot of big ling cod and decorator crabs. We got back onto the firehose, and headed back. At the end of the dive, Vlad did some bottle rotation practice, and I watched. I would have done a few skills too, but I had gotten quite cold on the dive. I had forgotten how much heat you lose while scootering, and had worn a thinner undergarment. Whoops! While Vlad was doing his practice, I did see a cute little baby octopus scuttling along the bottom. He was too quick though, so I couldn't show Vlad.

I was pretty happy with my navigation during the dive. I got us to all the points we wanted to see, and ended the dive right back where we started. Not bad for being frozen!

Whytecliff Park 07/01/2014

Happy New Year! Back to diving after a wonderful holiday season!

My first dive of the year was good old Whytecliff Park. Vlad wanted to do some bottle rotation practice, and a bunch of us came along. There was Jim Dixon, myself, Vlad, and John. I paired up with John, and the tides were not quite with us this time. It was quite a low tide, and still on the way out. Jim and Vlad had extra bottles, so the current was a bit of a factor during the dive. I took our groups out to the day marker, and once we rounded the corner the current really picked up. I turned us around in short order, and we headed back. We spent most of the dive after that doing the bottle practice. I switched gas a few times with John, and we kept an eye on Vlad and Jim. I had Jim pass me a bottle, and that went quite well.

I had a great deal of fun on this dive, even though we didn't see a lot. I felt quite confident and was looking forward to another year of fun diving!

P.S. I did take some video, but my GoPro doesn't work well in the dark. However, it did turn out like a UFOs landing though!

Topline 21/12/2013

Heather and I went out with the Topline for one more dive before the New Year. It was cold again, but not as cold as the last time we were out. The hose to fill the camera bucket wasn't frozen this time! Kevin and Jan were their usual excellent hosts.

We did two dives, one on Hutt Wall, and the other on Worlcombe Island. The Hutt Wall dive was filled with the usual suspects of nudibranchs, ling cod and various crabs. We missed the rock with the octopus den at the start of the dive, but there was plenty of other things to see.

The Worlcombe Island dive was equally as good. Heather decided to stay on board, due to getting a bit more chilled than she would have liked, and I dove with Ahmed. We had met him on a previous Topline excursion, and he was a very enthusiastic and active diver. It was his 100th dive, so I was honored to pair up with him. On the dive we were able to locate a nice big octopus as a reward for his 100th dive!

Back on board, someone even brought along some sparkling wine to celebrate the occasion. Kevin and Jan handed out Sea Dragon calenders to all on board as a Christmas gift. Many thanks to them for that!