Going Down

Man, I've been doing really bad with the whole "keeping up with my online dive log" thing! I've done 6 dives in the last 3 days, helping Liz finish an open water certification course, then taking 2 of the students out on the GB Church (an ore freighter sunk as an artifical reef in '91), and then 2 more today guiding a guy out on the breakwater. OH MY. I'm used to walking to work for 15 minutes, then more or less sitting at a desk or strolling around the office as I work. I'm soooo tired!

I've never successfully dove Mackenzie Bight. The last time I tried my ears were doing something very odd, and when we hopped in (and admittedly dropped right down to 94ft, which does increase the chance of this happening), I just couldn't quite equalize right so I was SO dizzy and disoriented that I called it after only 12 min. Even ascending to 65 ft didn't' help anything, so I wasn't just narced! Anyway... enough about that! On to the really good dive!

Liz and Scott had invited me to join them and their two open water students, along with Ken, another person I've hit the water with a couple of times. Ken was my dive buddy. Neither of us had been in the water much in the last few months, but we both are competent divers and decided to just take it nice and easy on the first dive to reaquaint ourselves with everything. It was a really nice dive! We went out at #1, and headed to the right. It was daylight(!!!), and I'm certainly NOT used to seeing everything - the viz was great so I didn't even realize how deep we were. We hit 74ft when I finally remembered the feeling of the water meant I'd gone below 70, and I needed to pay a little more attention to my computer - see, I really shouldn't get this out of practice! It was just so nice to be out there, though.

We swam down the side of the wall, not all the way down (too bad, there are giant boot sponges bigger that me at about 105 ft) but just exploring our way around. There were perch and rockfish, the usual, and crabs and lots of starfish. I found one single moon jelly, and blew a few bubbles at it... it swirled away. I found a baby medusa jelly, maybe the size of my little fingernail, that I didn't blow any bubbles at, and even one lonely baby squid like I saw on this dive.

There was one crab about the size of a toonie that was white with a black diamond on its shell. I don't know what it was, but it might have been a strangely coloured umbrella crab. Cute little guy, anyway!

For a first dive in a while, it was amazing. Just relaxing, great viz, good dive buddy, and all around fun.


Stats:
Time down: 35 min
Max Depth: 76 ft.
Temperature: 46 ° F
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 32 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Dive: shore, salt

Or rather, I'll be back tomorrow!
Yeah, finally getting back in the water, after too many months of stress, sickness, horrible viz and bad weather, and heading to Manitoba to see my family and coming back with a nasty chest cold, I'm actually going diving!


Eeep. I better get some sleep, though.

As many people know, I've had some health concerns lately. The most recent significant concern is that I've been getting really debilitating headaches, including an aura prior to them where I literally lose most of my sight. This is bad, as I use my eyes for things like seeing what I type when I write posts, navigating while driving, checking my computer and gauges, and looking at interesting fish and other life while diving. What fun is diving if you can't see?

Today I saw my doctor, and we talked. She agrees that they are textbook examples of classic migraine headaches. One very important thing to reduce frequency of migraines, and help with IBS symptoms - my other significant health concern - is to reduce stress as much as possible. This sadly doesn't give me the excuse to lounge about being fed grapes and fanned lightly. Instead, I have to be a little more practical and find things that I love to help my life feel better. My doctor came up with a plan that she thought might help me do what I love and solve the stress issue.

I should pursue a career in scuba diving.



That's hilarious. I'm STILL laughing as I type that. Don't get me wrong - I would love to dive more, and to make money at it. However, as the sort of main breadwinner of the family, I'm somewhat aware of exactly how much this new career would pay, and I have a few concerns as to other potential stresses it might cause. Stresses like hunger, homelessness, etc. Scott had the most hilarious expression of confusion and horror on his face when I told him, and he's the most successful diver I know. Sooo... yeah, I'm not running off to join the diver circus yet, but it's nice to be reminded that diving is something that's actively helping my life, and that I am lucky to be able to participate in something so amazing. I really don't mind that Bo gets to pursue diving, but for me, now, and in the near future? I really can't see it. I'll get back to you guys after I win that lottery I don't buy tickets for.

I dove with my new regulators today!

Liz and Gord (two divemaster candidates from the shop, Liz being someone I dive with fairly often) had a number of guided dives they each did today, so I showed up with all of my gear and joined them for the final dive of the day. What fun! I'm so used to using rental regs, as I've only borrowed Bo's 2 or 3 times ever, that this was quite a treat. The Scubapro X650 breathes very nicely, and is quite small compared to the rentals so it doesn't feel like it's getting drag when you're swimming in current. I need to play with it to tune it just right, but I really like it. I practised swapping to my backup, too, which is not a normal octopus, but a Scubapro Air2. This eliminated a dangling mouthpiece, plus it's much easier to find than a traditional octopus. I've liked the idea for a long time, and now I've got it! Woo! You definitely don't have the same ability to move your head around a lot with the Air2 in your mouth, because it's attached to the heavy hose that you use to inflate your BCD, so it's kind of stiff. Still, you have enough mobility, and it's still easy to clear, and to control your buoyancy in your BCD.

We had a short dive today, as most people needed to be out to catch ferries, but Liz did show us the location of the resident octopus, so I got to check him out. He's huge! I hope I can see him out and about someday. On the way back in I also found an umbrella crab! They're funny looking little guys. The one I found was sort of a light tan colour, and about the size of my palm.

Here is a picture that I did not take of another one. They are cute!


By the time we got out the weather was getting pretty nasty, so I didn't go back for another longer dive. Oh well... at least I got a little exercise after my Thanksgiving potluck feast with diving friends last night, and my family gathering dinner tonight!


Stats:
Time down: 31 min
Max Depth: 40 ft.
Average Depth: 24 ft.
Temperature: 48 ° F
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 26 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Dive: shore, salt

grr.
So CSI:NY starts off with a race between New Jersey and New York, and in the middle of the race they run over this body in full scuba gear.

Dude was murdered, so no one needs to get upset about a dive accident, but holy MOLY are they getting everything wrong wrong wrong.

Firstly, Danny looks at his dive console and say "Oh, he's at 90%!" and Mac says "How can a diver with a tank nearly full of oxygen and a spare regulator run out of air??" Um. I always fill my tank to 'half' with O2. Yep.

Girl on the show says "When I first started diving I was TERRIFIED of water, but now I'm, like, certified!!".

All of the divers talk and dress and act like stereotypical SURFERS. Dude.

And then Danny and Sheldon(?) hop into the east river in drysuits, and SPLIT UP to search the artificial reef. No, there's no surface support team, just Mac with his laptop. Wreck penetration with no gear.

Wow. It's amazing how much they've gotten wrong or just not accurate.

Oh gah. Now the CSIs who don't know anything about diving are doing some wreck diving around 160ft. The viz sure is awesome, though. Not a teeeeeny bit of silt anywhere, even when they're disturbing the bottom.




I hate CSI when I know it's so wrong. Why do I watch this?

The Ninja Pirates strike again!

This time, the scene of the battle was Henderson Point. Home to reefs, a canyon, sixgills and octopus, this is a really crazy dive site that's easily accessible from shore, if you can make it down a little rock cliff.

I borrowed Liz's scooter, and Bo took his, and we headed out to the first reef. Bo was leading, and I was worrying about buoyancy, etc more than direction, so I'm not sure if we hit the first or second reef when we stopped, but as we were at 59 feet I think we were just between them. We put the scooters down and swam around on the reef to see what we could find. Of course, other divers in our group found us and took a little joyride on the scooters while we were exploring, but besides that little bit of shenanigans, it was a good idea. ha.

This was my first real dive since the Port Hardy trip, and the difference in amount of life was striking, especially since I'd always considered Henderson Point to be very covered in, well, everything! Still, it had it's share of abundant life forms. The most noticeable at this dive location at night are the shrimp. You shine your light around, and all you see are little pink eyes shining back at you. It's actually kind of funny, as they don't seem to know that you can see them. There were skinny orange starfish and fat pale starfish, and lots of pink sunstars. At one point, it looked like a sunstar was reaching up a wall face, and then put it's arms back down on top of a rockfish, which it immedetly and violently launched itself off of. I just caught the sight of this foot and half wide sunstar flipping over backwards and an irritated tiger rockfish swimming away from it. Very amusing to me. There were the usual rockfish, some perch, a few sculpins, and some crab. There were also a bunch of the little sea gooseberries, which have cillia up their sides that shimmer like a rainbow when your light hits them.

On the first reef, we found this great big crack in the rock... and lo and behold, a tentacle! A VERY BIG tentacle, too! Suckers the size of loonies, I'd guess, which I think means it would be over 10 feet if it had decided to come out and say hello! Well, he was sleeping, and not in the mood to play, so we eventually swam off.

The point of the dive was to see if we could find any six gilled sharks, as they've been spotted a few times around there in recent months, but no one was lucky enough to spot any. We did bring a few fish pieces along in a bucket, and when Bo and I came across the bucket there were some crabs having a regular war over whose territory, and thus whose fish bits, it was. Pretty amusing.

When we stopped for our safety stop, I started noticing these little fish all over. They were only in the top 18ish feet of water, about 2-3 inches long, and kind of white/grey. They were shaped sort of like a ratfish, but may have been some kind of sculpin. I've looked in a couple of books, but I still don't know what they were. There were hundreds of them, though, hiding in kelp, floating in midwater (they'd just drop like a stone into the kelp when you shone a light on them!), just everywhere. Pretty cool!

This was also the very first dive with *MY* very awesome brand spanking new dive computer. I can actually press the buttons now and tell you exactly what I did on the dive. And clearly, I was having too much fun with the scooter, and wasn't all that great at riding it yet, because in some of my zooming around the reefs I clearly ascended far too fast as my computer has some blinking warnings. Oops.

I have more accurate stats, now, though!

Stats:
Time down: 52 min
Max Depth: 65 ft.
Average Depth: 44 ft.
Temperature: 51 ° F
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 26 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Dive: Salt, scooter, shore, night

I got to try scootering UNDER the water instead of above like I usually do!

Bo, Chris V and Liz decided to buy these scooters from some place that... well, it's just a little cheaper than what seems right, so we like to joke that they "fell off" the back of a semi. Ha. Well, they arrived, and we took them out. Chris Clark, Liz and I decided to take them out for a test run off the breakwater. We only had 2 that were charged up, so we planned to trade off.

We hopped in the water just before the first dive flag with the plan that if the batteries were not fully charged, we wouldn't end up going too far out so it wouldn't be too tiring to swim back in. Also, we didn't want to keep Bo in the shop much longer than necessary.

What fun. OH MY. These scooters arn't overly powerful and are about as fast as if you got kicking at a good pace without overexerting yourself, but it's so fun to go that fast with no effort at all! We tried loop the loops (I kept tipping over and water would get in my ear), and Chris did some lovely ballet-inspired twirls. It was enough fun to just sit on the bottom and watch the other two go all crazy, even!

We did stop by the statue for a while and I watched one baby cabezon chase a slightly smaller baby cabezon around in the sand at the base of the statue. It was pretty funny, and the bigger one also got pretty aggressive towards my finger when i wiggled it at him. Ha!

In short, scooters are fun.



Stats:
Time down: 26 min
Depth: 25 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 26 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Dive: Salt, scooter

The final dive of the day... we were all exhausted. We sure weren't going to cut it short just because of a little exhaustion, though! No way. We talked about potential sites with our boat captain, and decided to return to the site of our first dive. It was an easy location, beautiful, and we wouldn't be worrying about current and stuff so the fact we were so pooped would be ok.

Back to Hussar Point we went. As we were getting ready, a humpback whale came around a nearby island! Now, this is way more welcome than orcas, as humpbacks are beautiful, and instead of aggressive and mean they're just a little curious but quite shy. He didn't come too close to the boat, and alas, after we went in the water he moved farther off, so no one saw him underwater, either.

Hopping into the incredibly clear water, we descended to the bottom at 40 feet, and headed for the empty octopus den we'd found on the first dive. It was still empty, but there were a few more crab and things around. We just toured around, trying to stay out of the current that was coming up from the wall we'd explored the previous dive as much as possible. I was starting to have some problems with my gear, too. My regulator had been making some strange noises earlier that day when I enhalled, and now it was starting to let a little water in, just a teeny bit, in a sort of splashing way, and when I stopped inhaling a lot of air would then come out of the exhaust valve. Well, I was slightly worried that the splashing water would suddenly hit my throat and I'd cough, which REALLY sucks underwater, so I swapped to my backup regulator. Now, I don't own regulators, so these were rentals I was using from the shop, so I am not responsible for their maintence. Back at the shop after we returned we opened it to find a hole in the diaphragm that controls the air intake/keeping water out, which explains the malfunction! I wasn't in any sort of danger at that point, but since then I've seriously considered my options, and I now have a brand new regulator on order from Scubapro so I can take responsibility of its care and maintence, and avoid surprises like that. Of course, after that happened, my drysuit valves started going nuts. Ha. My exhaust valve on my arm started letting in water, and releasing air. I tried to close it, but I don't know what I did... regardless, I was getting wet and not holding air, so I just switched to my BCD (the inflatable vest that holds the tank) to regulate my boyancy. And THEN my chest valve started delivering water when I would press it, not air, so I was really getting wet. ARGH.

I was exhausted, cold, getting wet, and very unimpressed. I actually nearly started to cry because I was getting frustrated... but then I looked around again and said woah. Genifer, smarten up! You are having a very bad dive at HUSSAR POINT. This is better than some of your GOOD dives around Victoria!! Well. That sure cheered me up. As much as you can be cheered, anyway, when you're cold and wet... haah.

And right after that I went around a rock and saw the strangest looking great big sculpin (maybe a Buffalo sculpin, or maybe a brownish Irish Lord) I'd ever seen. He had the huuuuge round eyes that were watching me, and what almost looked like a beard. I swam closer, and the "beard" moved. And then I realized what it was.

The first rock crab I'd seen all trip was halfway in the mouth of the sculpin, looking like it had given a good fight, but was pretty much done at this point. Hilarious.

Well, I just got too tired before I was totally done with my air, but I still got in a good long dive. I got onto the boat for the last time, and we headed back to the marina. As we were driving along, a humpback breached not far in front of us. Just a random whale, breaching just once (which is a little unusual, as they usually breach a number of times, or not at all). So cool.

We got back to the trucks, loaded up, and drove the long and windy road back to Victoria. That was a very long day.

Stats:
Time down: 51 min
Depth: 54 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 26 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Breathing: Nitrox 32.4%
Dive: Salt, boat

Just a little farther down and across from Browning Wall is an interesting section referred to as Browning Rocks. While I think that someone wasn't getting very creative with naming these particular locations, I do think they are still so beautiful it doesn't matter what they're called, as long as you get in the water.

We hoped this would be a drift dive, and guessed it might be as much as 5 or 6 knots. But, like all the rest of the dives we'd done, the current was very strange and didn't just go along in one direction but rather made each group take a very different and very interesting route all over the area. Chris and Ethan ended up going back and forth across the same section, in fact.

We hopped in the water and descended, going in the opposite direction we expected at first... and then suddenly back the way we meant to go. And once again... OH MY GOODNESS. Seriously, this was just getting ridiculous how much stuff was around. There was a little more plant/kelp life here for the first while, but like earlier in the day there was a lot of rockfish, sponges, plumose anemoes, etc etc etc. Just colour everywhere. We were going along a wall, when I found yet another octopus den with a MASSIVE puget sound king crab shell in it... minus the crab who used to call it home. And minus the octopus who ate him. Bo dropped down below me on the wall, and suddenly started flashing his light at me, and then making the octopus hand signal!!! Yes, indeed, we found an octopus. I quickly descended, and we sat there, about a foot away from this big octopus trying to take a nap in a crack in the wall. He ignored us pretty well, so after a while we kept going. Bo continued below me, and I was going along looking in all the rest of the cracks I could find, when I was suddenly face to face with an eye! A second octopus!!! Eventually I got Bo's attention, and we tried to tempt the second octo out of its little naptime hole too. Normally I'd try to bring it a crab or something, but there were seriously no crabs anywhere around. It did stick out one of it's smaller legs to test us out, and I can say from experience now that they really stick to the blue drysuit gloves! Alas, it didn't decide it wanted to play, so we eventually moved on.

Again, the amazing wall, the immense amount of life everywhere... just mindblowing. Really. I can't say much else.


Stats:
Time down: 57 min
Depth: 67 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 26 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Breathing: Nitrox 34%
Dive: Salt, boat

After a long day of diving and a sort of early bedtime, we got up eeeeaaarrrlllly Sunday morning to head out to Browning Passage in time for slack tide. The water goes through these islands at an incredible rate, so it's really important to arrive when the tide is turning, and the water is relatively still (called slack!). Slack this morning was at 7:40am, and it's a good half hour boat ride out to the dive site, plus we had to check out of the hotel before diving, so it was an early start.

The first dive of the day was 7 Tree Island.

(yes, I took this picture. No, I haven't taken any other pictures, and no, I haven't gotten copies that Scott took so I can post them either, but I'm trying.)

This is kind of the north end of the passage. On the right of the island in the picture is a wall, just like the rest of the passage, that goes down to a ledge at around 70 to 90 feet, and then down to past 200 ft. Chris and Ethan were the first ones off the boat into the water, and we could see them at the bottom, even though it was over 40 ft below the boat. Man... that kind of viz will make you spoiled quickly! Theo, Scott and their cameras were next to go in, but as they were finishing suiting up, 3 orca came around the island! We all yelled ORCA! and then stood there in shock. See, orca are also called Killer Whales, and they don't have that name for fun. Orca are really good hunters. And they like to play with their food, too. These were not local whales, either, but transients, or possibly open water whales. Local whales tend to be less aggressive. Yeah. Scott looked very worried, which didn't make me feel great, but they swam farther away after a few minutes, and Jim, our boat captain, said it should probably be fine to go in the water, as they'd never had a problem before. Great... not the way I want to be known... "Well, we've only had a problem that one time with that girl from Victoria". But we all got in, and no one ended up seeing anything while they were down, so it was all good.

When it was our turn we hopped in on the closer side of the island in the picture, and we descended to the bottom, around 40ish feet. The current was still moving pretty strong against us, which meant for some really tough swimming for the first little bit. I wasn't too impressed, as I wanted to try to do all 3 dives, and not use up all of my energy on the first one, but we got around to the wall, it was totally fine. At first it was a little intimidating - the sheer wall and the surprisingly dark water past it actually made me hesitate for a moment. But I went anyway, of course. And WOW was it beautiful. Much like Browning Wall had been, there was simply not a square millimeter not covered in life!! The amazing brilliance of white plumnose anemones was dazzling. The colourful red and pink soft corals stood out, and there were oodles of light orange Dead Man's Finger sponges all over, too. I got quite a kick out of those. There were Bryozoans, and red and yellow and blue and purple stuff that I seriously can't even begin to identify. And the fish!!

I've seen a lot of kinds of rockfish, but I've seen barely any China rockfish in my life, much less ones bigger than my hand. There were hundreds of them! Big ones, too, which means they're probably older than I am. There were canary and copper and vermillion rockfish, too. I must admit, I can no longer eat rockfish, or snapper as they're usually called in restaurants. Knowing how long it takes for them to mature, plus getting so excited when I see a rare variety of them has made me "one of those people" who can't eat something for more than just medical reasons. Oh well.. I still like salmon. haha.


There were a very small number of greenlings, various sculpins, and of course nudibranchs. Not many crab, though, other than some absolutely HUGE Puget Sound King Crab. Mind you... we found more dead ones than alive. I found an unoccupied octopus den with a HUGE crab shell in it. I picked up a front claw arm and swam after Bo with it, pretending to try to pinch him, but really, just marvelling that this arm was thicker than my wrist.

As you swim along the wall, you come to a place where you head up and to the left, and you circle back around the island. It was bizarrely beautiful! It looked like white sand, as thousands of butterclam shells had been crushed into little pieces on the ground. It was the only place where there was not a lot of life growing everywhere, just a whole bunch of sea pens in the sand. The water in that area was only around 40 ft deep, too. We circled the island and kind of hung out close to where we'd first come in, but where the current sort of swirled around into a backeddy so we could mostly just hang out, looking at the teeny tiny life you don't get to see when you're floating by on a current.

By that point it was time to ascend, so we found one of the only pieces of bullkelp strong enough still to hang on to, and floated up in the current.

Stats:
Time down: 54 min
Depth: 67 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 26 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Breathing: Nitrox 32%
Dive: Salt, boat

The last dive of the first day... Five Fathom Rock. Everyone was a little tired and moving a little slower than earlier in the day, but we were still eager to hop in one more time. The tides were such that no more diving was going to happen in Browning Pass that day, so we headed back towards Hardy Bay - slowing for a while to watch a mother humpback whale and her calf swim by. Whee!

Upon arriving at the site we suited up one more time and dropped in to about 30 feet of water. After easily 60 foot viz, it was a little disappointing to "only" have what would be a normal viz down at the breakwater. The "rock" is kind of a big round area that's higher than the surrounding bay, so you can kind of just circle around and check everything out. In one place the rocks were about 15 feet high with a 2 foot crevice running from top to bottom. I thought it a great idea to swim through it (no overhead environment, so I was fine), but at the end of the crevice it met another crevice at a 90° angle and when I turned the corner a HUGE lingcod was swimming at me. I kind of shrieked a little and swam up and out of his way. Ha.

We found lots of lingcod and rockfish there (it is a rockfish sancuatry, actually), and even a ratfish - also called a Chimaera, and usually found at more like 2000 feet. And then we found a little wolf eel! He was just a small guy, although he had turned to an adult's colouring already. Then I found a Fanta bottle, which I kept after convincing the little crab inside that he did indeed wish to stay in the ocean and not follow me home in the bottle. There were also the usual incredible number of anemones, sponges, kelp, what I *think* was ratfish egg cases, hydrods, and a million other amazing things.

What a day.

We had planned to go to a local bar on the invitation of our waitress the night before, but everyone was SO tired that we just went back to the pub for more tasty local halibut, and then everyone went to bed. Yeah, we're real party animals...

Stats:
Time down: 56 min
Depth: 56 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 26 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Breathing: Nitrox 31%
Dive: Salt, boat

"You're going to drop in right here, and you'll look around and think, well, this is nice. Then, you're going to come around that little corner right there to where The Wall starts, and all you'll be able to do is stare and think OH HOLY #&@%!"

Those were the dive instructions.
Normally you get a little more, like what direction, depth, current advisory, etc etc, but that's seriously all we needed. And they were mighty accurate, too.

I've taken a little time to post about these dives because I'm finding it so close to impossible to put into words what kind of visual onslaught it really is. There's just so much too look at that I kind of got overwhelmed!
Take an image like this.

You can't actually see any rock there - darker stuff is sponge or other plant and animal growth.
Now take this:

Now imagine you can fly and hover, and you're hovering, looking down at least 60 feet and up another 60 feet, and all you see is that much life, EVERYWHERE. It's truly mindblowing. (yes, those are both taken on the Wall, although not from anyone in my group)


The current was VERY strange. You be going along and suddenly oh! going to your left! OK. Oh wait, now... down? um, ok. Oh dear, now up and to your right. Very strange indeed. There were large schools of fish, and you just kind of watched which way they were turning in order to anticipate the current.


Stats:
Time down: 58 min
Depth: 67 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 20 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate with a steel 100, Force Fins
Breathing: Nitrox 31%
Dive: Salt, boat

Our first dive out of Port Hardy...

We left the dock at around 9am, everyone excited to get in the water and see some crazy dive sites. There was a beautiful fog oozing over the islands on to the water, making for a lovely views. We took about a half hour ride out to Browning Pass, world famous for the incredible amount of water that flows through it and all the life it encourages. You see, a massive amount of water comes around Vancouver Island and is forced up through some rather small channels by the time it hits the north end of the Island. This HUGE movement of water brings an extraordinary amount of nutrients, encouraging some of the most prolific and colourful life anywhere on the planet. As divers from the island are so proud of saying, even Jacques Cousteau thought that the only place better was the Red Sea. Browning Pass is kind of the epitome of this fantastic diving.

We went up to a spot called Hussar Point. This was a favourite first dive site for Jim(our boat captain), who used it frequently as a way to test divers he didn't know on how their navigation, etc was, as he'd point in the direction you needed to head, and then saw how far off course you'd end up. We were amazing, of course.

Possibly because of the viz.

OH MY.

From the boat, you could very clearly see the bottom, and it was at least 30-40 feet. We dropped in, and you just descend, and swim around, and you can see everything! Along the one section there's a wall that goes down, and you can sit on the top and look down the 60-70 feet to the bottom. WOW. The second thing that hits you is how everything is covered in white. There are plumose anemone, and while the breakwater grows them a little bigger, this place grows more. And by more, I mean billions more. There was nearly no bare rock anywhere - it was just anemones and sponges and more anemones and starfish and sunstars and sculpins and rockfish and some HUGE Puget Sound King crab and an (empty) octo den and more anemones and... oh man. So much to see. It was kind of insane. You could look waaaaaaay over and see far off in the distance the other pairs of people diving, and then just look around and say WOW. There were some sea lions playing off the point, which we hoped would swim over and check us out, but we didn't see them while we were in the water. I'm always of very mixed emotions about spotting larger sea life while diving. On one hand, it's super cool, but on the other they are wild animals, some can be a little agressive, and I'm just a little unsure of how much I'll enjoy their playing. Ah, well. It's not like it's going to keep me out of the water. I'm sure if/when I really encounter stuff, I'll figure out how much I like it.

I had a wee bit of equipment trouble on this dive. As this was my third dive with my new BCD, I wasn't perfect at draining all of the air out of it, apparently, and I kind of made myself floaty. I was swimming around, hanging onto a big rock, and Bo tried to help me... and noticed the BCD was still squishy. Ooops. But really, it was good, because I learned how to drain it completely after that, and I now know how to watch for it. Other than that, it was a MOST AMAZING start to the weekend. Wow. I'm going to be saying wow a lot.

Stats:
Time down: 56 min
Depth: 63 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 26 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Breathing: Nitrox 31%
Dive: Salt, boat

Friday, September 7. It's morning, we're putting the last minute stuff into our bags and bins, and loading up the trucks. We've got Scott's Ford Ranger, and a rented F150 crew cab with a covered bed. Scott, Theo, Chris, Ethan, Bo and myself get into the vehicles and head out.

I've never really been farther north on the Island than Duncan. Wow... it's so pretty! The drive up is so beautiful... it gets more mountainous as you drive, and you can see the islands and the mainland when you near the end of the highway. It's amazing.

We arrived in Port Hardy after a long and beautiful drive, sort out some confusion with the hotel, and we got all settled and headed to the nearby pub for some AMAZING halibut burgers or fish and chips.

I can barely believe we got any sleep that night. I was so excited to dive the world renowned Browning Wall the next day... but I slept, thankfully.

Until I get the actual dive logs up, here's a strange youtube video of some Browning Wall footage. This thing has some great shots (the really closeup stuff around 2 minutes actually gives you a hint of how much life is on EVERY SQUARE MILLIMETER), but there's a lot of jiggly not-really-focused stuff too. Every white dot you see is a Plumose anemone, and every place that looks a little darker is probably a sponge, coral, anenome, or possibly a fish, crab, starfish, basket star, or... something else. Believe me, there is no rock visible anywhere.

Bo and I wanted to make sure my buoyancy was good after I finished sewing my fleece thermal suit, so we did a little night dive on the breakwater. It was pretty good - hopped in half way to the first flag, swam out until we were at 36 feet, then swam back in... alas, I needed to know what would happen when my tank was nearing empty (the aluminum 80s that I usually use are actually buoyant when they're pretty much empty), so I started draining air from my secondary. Wellllll... i need more weight. I went up, clinging to kelp on my way so I wouldn't go too fast and get hurt. ha.

No worries, it was fine, but I've now added 8 more pounds of lead to what I have to carry when I'm wearing all of my warmest stuff, which is simply a pain in the butt... and the back, legs, and shoulders. Ha. I won't be dressing this warm in summer or shorter or single dives, so I'll be able to play with it. Still, good to know, as I'll be DIVING IN PORT HARDY on Saturday.

Earlier, though, we were having fun with the phosphorescent light in the water, turning off our lights and waving our hands. I'd be following Bo with my light turned away, and he looked like he was trailing pixie dust, all shimmery behind his fins. Ha. Then we found a large (16 inches?) pinkish flat worm. Very gross. Just kinda poking in the sand on the ground. Ew.

Stats:
Time down: 18 min
Depth: 37 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 24 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Dive: Salt, shore, night

Awww.

I am ridiculously excited about this weekend's trip up to Port Hardy. I completed my fleece onepiece underdrysuit suit last night, I've added a few H-clips to my brand new wing and backplate to perfect the fit. (I've got this awesome adjustable strap system, too) I'm doing a short-ish dive tonight to make SURE the fleece suit works, but I'm sure it will be great. Whee! We leave Friday morning, and we're driving up. We'll do 6 or 7 dives over Sat and Sun, and then drive back home... and I took Monday off for good measure.

Have I mentioned how excited I am?

I got a new BCD! I'm so excited!!!!
It's a super duper fancy Oxycheq backplate and wing, with an adjustable harness system and pockets attached to the harness belt. I did my first dive in it today, tagging along with Bo's class. He was doing dive #2 with one student, and dive #4 with another, and had Nikki along to divemaster, so we did a nice easy dive at the Breakwater. Hopped in before #1, sort of waited and swam around a little while the #2 diver did some regulator skills. This was good for me because i could practice fin pivots and buoyancy. Mind you, practicing at 23 feet is different than swimming around at 60 ft, but it's good practice anyway.

After a while, they finished their skills and we all swam out a little farther. It was a nice relaxing dive, never very deep at all, although i did look up too far right at the beginning and flooded my suit a little, and then again at the end.

The BCD is a dream. SO much more comfortable than my old one (which really wasn't even that bad), and after I adjust some clips to make the straps stay exactly perfectly, I am going to love this thing even more. It will take a few more dives to get used to, as it holds me in a different position than my old vest-style, and especially with the Force Fins it's a little unusual, but wow... I'm in love. I've got the 6 lb backplate, plus I put 4 lbs of lead on the belt itself, in the back. This means only 18 lbs of lead in my pockets!

Stats:
Time down: 60 min
Depth: 37 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 22 lbs weight plus 6 lb backplate, Force Fins
Dive: Salt, shore

As I look for pictures of the creatures I see below the water, I end up finding lots of interesting articles. I found one in particular today that may help slow my hunt for pictures online, as it's a review of a camera and housing that sounds extraordinarily good plus cheap. Check it out. This is probably american, so I may not be able to find it exactly for $500, but I'm totally looking into this. While I'd LOVE to get a housing for our DSLR, I don't have that kind of money. This is something that's actually affordable! While googling around to find out actual costs, I did see a few more reviews on the housing and the camera, and it looks pretty good. The Casio camera is actually Casio electronics and Pentax optics - I LOVE my Pentax Optio, so this is good good good news to me. Also, this housing can accommodate an external flash!! Hello, this is perfect!

Yeah. Of all the crap I want to buy that I can't exactly afford but really want to afford anyway(like a Wii, for example), this is moving to the top of the list. A little careful planning, and I might be able to pull it off, though... Also - for anyone with a digital camera looking for a housing, check out this place. That's a good list!

Speaking of taking pictures, I was excited to discover a site by a guy from San Fransisco with the most amazing photography on it - only to read that the diver responsible for these most astounding illustrations of the beautiful strange world beneath the Pacific went for a dive alone, and didn't return (it seems his anchor was stuck, and he descended the line to free it but possibly lost it in the very strong current). Ack! That just leaves a sinking feeling in my gut. It seems the passion and drive that powers some amazing people can also lead them to decisions that cause them to die doing the very thing they love... bittersweet, as I'm sure they'd prefer to die doing it in a few more decades from now. Still, Cold Water Images has some truly gorgeous photography that simply has to be seen. Check out his work of some cabezon!



I love this one of a diver, and sea pens, and seals and his kelp pictures are crazy! While I hate hearing about such tragedies, even if it was something that may have directly come about due to his own choices, I'm happy that his friends and family are working to continue to bring the beauty he captured to the world.

On a waaay happier note, I'm going to post a final picture that I looove by my friend Scott. He too is a good photographer well on his way to becoming great. Click on the picture and you'll get to his entire Flickr collection, which includes some dry pictures too, and certainly not all of his good stuff... hopefully he posts more soon.

I should count how many times I've dove on the breakwater. It's got to be about half of my total dives, at least. Thing is, I love it there. You've got the shop right there so you can suit up and rinse off, you can grab tanks, air, whatever, and afterwards you may even head upstairs for a bowl of chowder. Yum! Ok, I didn't do that yesterday though, but we did dive the breakwater.

Aly and I met up at the shop shortly after 5, got all suited up, and walked out to somewhere past 2. The waves were big enough that we had to find just the right place to go in so we wouldn't get the worst of it, but it wasn't big enough to be scary. We headed down, to about 35-40 feet, straight away. The viz in the first 20 feet was meh, but down past 30 it was pretty good, and I could see a lot. Or... maybe it's just because this was the first time in ages I wasn't diving at dusk or night? hahah.

Bo had cautioned us about a Cabezon that was patrolling around flag 3. These ornery fish are very territorial, and seem to have something against blue drysuit gloves. I'm not interested in getting charged and having to fight a fish that big, so I was VERY happy when I spotted him that he was swimming grumpily along, passing a little above us, and not interested in us. We continued on, enjoying hundreds of little perch in a school above us. There was a current pulling out, but not strong, so we basically floated along looking at things. There was a lot to see! I saw sooo many longfin sculpins (at least, I'm pretty sure they were longfins... it seems sculpins can be hard to identify!). They're really little, crazy pink and orange and blue striped fish who sit on the rocks and try to look like the sponges and plants around them. There were quite a number of crab - lots of the usual hermit, kelp and decorator crabs, two Puget Sound King Crab, and coolest of all - a heart crab! We didn't find the wolf eels, but that was ok, because we found another grunt sculpin! Eeep! Such a cute little guy.

After we turned around, the current made us swim a little harder, but it was ok. I was testing Andy's Force Fins to see if they'd fit my feet. I'd used another friend's original Force Fins, and they were great, but too big (size chart suggests I get a ML or L, his were XXL), but Andy's fit a lot differently. I liked them! Thing was, Bo was going to buy them as his backups, or if I'm diving I could use them until I actually bought my own, but during a dive with some students today his main TwinJet fins were lost in the ocean. HOWEVER... after being told roughly where they were lost, Aly and I did a little scouting, and I found one of them! Scott has one left over from another incident the same size, so until the second one turns up, Bo thankfully has a pair of TwinJets again, and I can totally wear these force fins (they're slightly wide, but stiffer than Ethans so it's not as big a deal) in the meantime. This is great - this means other than a tank and regs, I'm totally outfitted as either a wet or dry diver! Yippie! I also figured out a funnylooking frog kick that's lots of fun, not tiring at all, and good for a bit of cruisin around. My poor ankle is still messed up, so I was happy that the froggie didn't hurt.

I will leave you with a picture by Scott of a Lionsmane Jellyfish, looking so very much like the one Aly nearly swam in to.




Stats:
Time down: 47 min
Depth: 40 ft, max 67 ft.
Wearing: Bare crushed neoprene drysuit, 28 lbs weight, Force Fins, new dive computer
Dive: Salt, shore