Sunday, July 6, 2014

10 Mile Point 05/07/2014

Heather had  the Nanaimo Dragonboat festival this weekend, so I took the opportunity to come over and do some diving. I declared all my cylinders as a good citizen should, and got put right at the front of the ferry! Now, I realized though that meant that they would just push the truck off if there was an emergency, but at least I got off first!


We stayed in a yurt at the Riverbend Resort near Parksville, similar to the ones at Porpoise Bay Charters. It was great, there was a fire pit, a gas fireplace, and all the comforts of home, but it felt like you were in a tent! Listening to the rain on the canvas roof was very relaxing.


The first dive I did was with Greg. He had checked the tide charts, and 10 Mile Point was doable. 10 Mile was one of Greg's favorite dive sites, and for good reason. I had done it a few times in the past, and loved it. While often not possible due to the high current, that same current provided food for the explosion of life that lived there. Very very nice for a dive that is basically 10 minutes away from the city. I wished Vancouver had such a dive site. We had an additional advantage in that we planned to bring scooters. This made the dive even nicer, because we could enter the water at Spring Bay and scooter over to 10 Mile. The entry at Spring Bay was so much nicer than the steep rocks at 10 Mile. It also meant that we didn't have to worry so much about timing the tide just right. I got a very nice picture of all our scooters lined up, ready to go.


We were joined by Mark, whom I hadn't seen since the Hornby Island Sea Lion dive. We quickly geared up and were soon scootering over to 10 Mile. Greg ran the navigation, and did a good job as always. It was simple, we took a compass bearing to the point, dropped down and followed the bottom for about 5 minutes. This deposited us right on the wall. We came across another dive team there, but they didn't see us. I had met one of them in the parking lot, his name was Trevor. We stowed our scooters and proceeded to enjoy the fabulous dive: Cabezon, red Irish lords, buffalo sculpin, clown nudibranchs, gumboot chitons, baby Puget sound king crabs, huge schools of bait fish, leopard dorids, the list went on! I got a very small amount of green, grainy video.



These pictures are not mine, but they are representative of what we saw.

Cabezon
Red Irish lord


Clown nudibranch


Baby puget sound king crab


Leopard dorid


The visibility was good, maybe 20 feet. It wasn't the best, but since all the life was up close it didn't matter much. We didn't see any octopus, but Trevor reported during the surface interval that they saw seven! Why couldn't we see even one?

Greg and I did one more dive, and did the same thing again. There was a lot of fishing line and fishing lures littering the wall. You could tell it was a popular fishing spot. All the old line and cast off equipment marred such a nice dive site. That was the only down side. Maybe one day Victoria would make it a marine protected area.

Greg and I finished off a great day of diving with a snack and a hot drink at the Starbucks down the road. I couldn't wait for next time!

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