Sunday, September 12, 2010

Woodlands 06/09/2010

I explored a new dive site on this dive, which was always fun!

I was quite surprised no one had mentioned Woodlands before. I had known about it from the 151 Dives book. I had thought several times to go out, but never made it. I was glad I did because it turned out to be an awesome dive site!

Woodlands was north of Deep Cove, in Cove Forest. On Google maps it's labeled North Woodlands. Use satellite view if it's not on in the link already.

The road was quite winding and narrow. You followed Indian River Drive pretty much all the way to the end. There was a steep hill down to a cul de sac. From there a trail led down a long dock/warf, which was public. Other docks there were private.

I was diving with Anita Hollands today. She had come along to Pavilion Lake with me, and we had a great time. She had brought along wine, cheese, avocado and soup. Diving in civilized comfort! Of course, the wine was after.

We unloaded gear at the cul de sac. There were no benches, and residential homes were all around. If you had doubles, it could be tricky. Anita appropriated a stump in the driveway of one of the houses, though. No one came out to yell! I think there was some low retaining walls that could work to put doubles on, though.

Parking was a problem. You had to park fairly far back up the hill. But there would be room for several vehicles. However, I don't think more than 4 divers could comfortably dive here at once. If you spent your time on the beach it might give more room.

Parking and gearing up issues aside, it was easily doable. We entered the water from the beach. The book said to enter from the dock, but we checked that out and it was not good. Not only was it a steep walk down the walkway at lower tides, the exit ladder was dodgy at best. With doubles you'd be hard pressed to climb it back out.

It was much easier to go down the narrow trail to the right of the dock, and enter from the beach. It was narrow, and there were brambles, but it was fine. It could be that the beach was not public. There was a massive mansion there, with a pair of red lips as a couch out front. Very garish. Making sure to go into the water from near the dock pilings might have been a good idea. Don't want to give divers a bad name!

The dive site was around the channel side of the small island, and around the marker. The depth in the bay out there was quit shallow, about 20 feet. It was a sandy bottom, so we surface swam out closer to the marker and then descended there.

There were tonnes of crabs, so crabbing here seemed to be a great option.

On the first dive, we went to the south east of the marker and followed the rock. Out in the channel side, the rock dropped off to a really great wall that continued east to west all along the back of the island. The wall slopped off to more than 100 feet for sure. Maybe not much more than that, but perfect for recreational dives.

All through the dive we were amazed at the number and types of nudibranchs, as well as crabs. No octopus, which was odd considering the amount of food. The visibility was pretty good, maybe 30 feet, but dropping to 5 in the shallows.

We saw leopard dorids, yellow margin dorids, hooded nudibranchs, white-lined dironas (also known as frosted nudibranchs), huge constellations of moon jellyfish, hundreds of longhorn decorator crabs, red rock crabs, dungeness crabs, coonstripe shrimp, a grunt sculpin, roughback sculpin, a water jelly and a bunch of others that escape me. The grunt sculpin would not cooperate to swim for us. Too tired I guess! There were so many nudibranchs, especially the white-lined ones. I'd never seen so many in one spot before. Most of them were laying eggs, and there were eggs everywhere.

The size of the dungeness crabs was amazing too. Massive. They were in the cracks and crevices everywhere, some guarding their cracks fiercely.

On the second dive, we aimed to go between the marker and the island. However the depth was so shallow and the visibility so poor, we skipped that in favor of going around deeper like on the first dive. We did return back between the marker and the island though. Out the channel side, it formed a sand bottomed cut in the rock wall, so it made a good landmark to come back to.

We spent most of the dive between 60 and 80 feet. That seemed to be where the most interesting stuff was. However the shallows around the marker at 40 feet provided a varied landscape of tumbled boulders and cracks where a lot of stuff was living. You could spend a whole dive poking around here.

Other landmarks of note were underwater anchor cables for the dock on the island. If you came across those you would know you were on your way back in. Useful when the visibility was bad.

Boat traffic in this area was a hazard, but it was no problem if you carried a surface marker and made sure to stay near the rock walls.

Current seemed to be non existent. We were diving on a rising tide. I'm sure current could be an issue in the channel, so diving near slack would be a good idea. However, there seemed to be enough protection from the rock walls to make for a nice dive even if there was current.

All in all this was a great dive site. It really took me by surprise!

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