Egmont 11-14/10/2013

I am putting the video, and the picture album here at the top so that you don't have to wade through my long-winded trip report if you don't want to!

My trip photos are here:

https://plus.google.com/photos/103220399355688115810/albums/5935516061902728513

Francois Keen who was also on the trip posted his pictures here. They are very good!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/106879217@N06/sets/72157637032405226/

I was very excited about this trip. Heather and I had originally met on this same trip three years ago. At that time, we didn't dive together, so it would be great not only to have an anniversary trip but also to dive together!

Our hosts were once again Kal and Anne of Porpoise Bay Charters, and the trip was organized by International Diving Center. IDC had run a trip to Egmont every year for the last while called the "Strongwater Retreat". It was a small group with six of us: Heather, myself, Alan Johnson, Jonathan Gormick and two divers I didn't know, Francoise and Alex. We began to call the the "International Contingent" during the trip. Francois was French, but had spent many years in New Zealand and Alexei was Russian.

We met up on the Friday at the Egmont Government dock. Alexei and Francois were already there, so we introduced ourselves and started to haul gear onto the dock. Jonathan and Alan showed up not long after, as did Kal and our boat.

We were also greeted by the rest of the boat "crew", Nanuk and Nemo.

We also took the obligatory group shots, which every real trip needed!

We dumped off our gear and picked our accommodations (yurts again!) and then went for a quick evening dive at North Sutton Island. The visibility was excellent, and it was a good indication of the great diving to come. That evening, we had a late dinner and retired quite early in anticipation for the diving the next day.

The morning brought an excellent day. In fact, the whole weekend would be clear and sunny. Some mornings were extremely foggy, but that burned off quite quickly. The clear skies just added to the great weekend.

That morning, we discovered some clever racoons had gotten onto the boat, and had made a partial meal out of Francois' zipper wax. Kal said that they would get into anything if there was something edible. Chief culprits were people leaving snacks on the boat over night. After a hearty breakfast thanks to Anne, we were off for a great day of diving! Heather and I sure were happy!

The first stop was one of my favorites, the Power Lines in Agamemnon Channel. The cloud sponges were amazing as always, and the dwarf gorgonian corals were everywhere. I thought there was a lot more coral than I had seen previously, but it could just be that I was paying attention more. On the way back, we stopped and looked at the pictographs painted on one of the rock walls. Kal gave us a nice talk on some of the things they had learned about these ancient pictures. The next dive was after lunch at Courtnel's Folley, so named because of the man who built a large warehouse that never succeeded. Or at least the story was something like that! I believe we found the wolf eel that I have in the video on this dive. it was quite a surprise to see it. We had stopped to look at something else, then I looked down and there he was!

Nemo's Leap was next, and it was here I think we encountered some sea lion's at the end of the dive. We were on the surface, and Heather pointed excitedly behind me. Low and behold, a sea lion was curious about us and was quite close. Francois and Alexei were at their safety stop, and the sea lion came even nearer them. Francois got some excellent pictures of the sea lion. For me, I wasn't able to get my camera out quick enough to get any good video. It was a great experience!

That night we watched a video I had brought along, "The Land the Devours Ships", a National Geographic Explorer video that was done in 1993. It was about the finding of one of the ships that was sent to find the lost Franklin Expedition. It was a bit long, but was ultimately quite interesting.

The next day had us going to Captain's Corners first, then through the famous Skoocumchuck rapids to the wreck of the Chaudiere. The rapids were quite tame thankfully, and Heather got some video of our crossing them. It's at the start of the video at the top of this page. The Chaudiere was a less interesting wreck in my opinion due to the fact that it seemed to have a lot less life on it. The fact that it was on its side meant that a lot more of the hull was exposed, which seemed difficult for life to get a foot hold on. There did seem to be more growing on it this time though. Anne said that a group of pacific white sided dolphins had cleaned a lot of the life off of the wreck at one point. Maybe it was recovering. Anyway, it was still a very good dive. I found a shaggy mouse nudibranch on this dive, but didn't get any video! I must have turned off the camera instead of turning it on. Oh well, they were not the most interesting looking nudibranchs, but I loved the name and I did not seem them very often.

On the ride back, people got quite sleep in the beautiful day.

The last dive of the day was at South Sutton Island, because the sites that we looked at first were all not optimal. South Sutton was a nice little dive, with a lot of urchins and nice clear water. A perfect little dive before Thanksgiving Dinner!

The dinner was fabulous. Anne made us turkey and stuffing, and we had a great blackberry cobbler for desert. Too full to do much else, we again went to bed pretty early.

The next day dawned very spookily with even more mist and fog. On this the last day, we visited Jaggy Crack, and Swede's Reef. At Jaggy Crack the sheer number of feather stars was just incredible. They covered the wall with their waving tendrils. There were some excellent and very large nudibranchs as well, with a giant orange peel nudibranch, and sea lemons.

The last dive was at Swede's Reef. I was very excited about this dive, because of past experiences. I had found a puget sound king crab carapace on this dive, and I still had it. I was hoping to find another! Octopus used this area as one of their favorite hunting grounds. The deep side of the sea mound provided upwellings of nutrients that contributed to a very productive site. Heather and I found a very nice brown box crab, and a lot of large puget sound king crabs. I did find a carapace, but the crab that was making it had just shed it. It was extremely flimsy, but was quite interesting to see. Then Heather found the octopus! It was under a rock, but was exposed quite well. We got some great video of it sleeping. It was one of the high-lights of the trip. We also found a little moss-headed warbonnet, and lots of other little fish and critters. Swede's reef was one of the high-lights of the weekend.

All in all, the trip was again amazing. Hats off to Kal and Anne for being such gracious hosts, and IDC for organizing the trip! I can't wait for the next one!