Tide conditions were good for that evening, and we planned to catch the falling tide. When we arrived, there were two divers coming out of the water. They said that it was pretty good. Encouraged, we put our gear together, took it down to the beach, parked the vehicles, put our drysuits on, and walked down. The locals had been cleaning up the trail and area even more this year. The creek which had been choked with brambles had been cleared out. Also, the bathrooms had motion sensing lights installed. The community garden was looking great too. Very nice work! It was a very nice evening, no rain, and warm. It was almost like summer diving was here.
Our dive plan was pretty simple. We planned to swim out for 25 minutes at 70 feet, then turn around and come back at 50 feet making an easy 60 foot average depth. At the end of the dive, we would do a few skills. The visibility wasn't that bad at all. We followed the bottom contour out, and the vis was about 10 feet. At 70, it got a bit better to maybe 20 feet. Not amazing, but not terrible either.
We found three ling cod egg masses on our way out. None of them had males guarding them, which was very strange. I reported what we found to the Vancouver Aquarium Ling Cod Egg Mass Survey. We found a lot of yellow margin dorids, along with regular white nudibranchs. In the boot sponges and cloud sponges, we found many nice red fur crabs and longhorn decorator crabs. We also found a very pretty looking worm. I looked it up later, and it was a white-ringed ribbon worm. This is what it looked like, using a photo that someone else took.
We also happened on a nudibranch egg mass, which looked like ribbons of white noodles. There was also a very interesting sculpin in the shallows when we were taking our fins off. It didn't look like a buffalo or great sculpin, and I was not able to figure out what it was.
We finished up a few skills, and took advantage of the cleared creek to do some rinsing on-site. Who needed a hose! A good little dive...
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