Whytecliff 20/05/2015

Evan Soukas and I went out to Whytecliff Park for some skills and a fun dive. It was a pretty nice evening, with the tide on a flood. Sea to Sky Scuba (formerly the Edge) had some divers out, but they had not been out in the water yet so we hoped the vis was OK.

On the swim out to the Day marker, we passed two men on the rocks. I noticed that they had three flourescent orange lines running down into the water. We adjusted our course to avoid entanglement, then I realized what they were doing. They were crabbing in the marine protected area that is Whytecliff Park. Once I realized what they were doing, I advised them loudly from the water that what they were doing was against the law. They claimed that they did not know. I pointed out there were signs posted clearly stating that harvesting marine life at Whytecliff was prohibited. They did pull up their three traps and left, so that was good. The toll-free number to report poachers was 1-877-952-7277 (RAPP). You could also fill out a form online.

The other problem with this was divers would not expect fishing in the bay. Since these traps were put into the water in a popular place to swim through to get out to the Day marker, they could easily cause entanglement. I certainly wouldn't expect to be swimming along and blunder into a line in that area, or even worse, have a trap land on or near you. Thankfully they did leave.

We checked out the crack on the way out to the Day marker that usually had an octopus, but he wasn't home. This crack was at about 30-40 feet of depth, and could be found fairly easily if you followed the contour past the rusty metal boxes. The vis wasn't too bad actually. Other life we came across were the plumose gardens (always pretty), and a Kincaid shrimp (picture courtesy of DFO).

There were many gumboot chitons, as well as yellow margin dorids. On the dive the previous week at Britannia Beach, I hadn't seen any nudibranchs at all. It was good to see some. We also came across an interesting clam, which in the end I really couldn't identify. It was interesting in that its siphon was quite a bright orange.

At the end of the dive, we did some skills, deployed and SMB and did an ascent practice to the surface. We came up quite a ways from shore, a lot farther out than I had expected. It was a long swim back!