Alert Bay Old Breakwater 22/05/2016

Another Island weekend, this time to visit Heather's family in Alert Bay. We had talked about doing a dive there, and this time we made good on that. We brought our gear up, and did a dive just outside the U'Mista Cultural Center, along the old breakwater. The car was packed.

First we checked out the breakwater and the nearby dock. There was a replica war canoe tied up there. Very cool!

The water from the end of the dock looked very promising, bull kelp and nice and clear.

Finally, it was kind of funny to see a boat that had sunk while tied up at the dock. I guess there were shipwrecks too!

But enough dock pictures, on to the dive! The entry was nice and easy. There was boat traffic between the breakwater and the beach, so we did plan to ensure not to surface there.

I will put the video compilation here. Read on for more details.

After having some bad visibility in Vancouver, it was so nice to have good viz again.

There were a surprising number of painted anemons. Heather was lucky to find a candy stripe shrimp on this one.

The painted anemones really were everywhere.

And there were some truly enormous ones.

As expected, there was a lot of junk on the bottom too. We saw old sinks, boots, bottles, cans, and I couldn't resist mugging for the camera with a can of Lucky Lager!

The junk was very interesting, providing neat photo opportunities.

The breakwater pilings were often completely covered in giant plumose anemones.

And there were beautiful nudibranchs too!

We came across the biggest shag mouse nudibranch we had ever seen. I had to move it to get a good picture, sorry nudibranch!

Here is a picture of Heather looking good.

And there were some interesting pictures pointing up toward the surface. The bubbles and sunbeams were incredible.

We also came across some new and interesting shrimp.

I was very surprised to find a Red Irish Lord. We actually found two of them.

At the end of the dive, we floated over huge beds of eel grass, and bull kelp. Magical!

Some folks on the dock asked us to check out the "wreck" that I mentioned above, to recover a pump that was on it. I said we'd do what we could. We did come across the wreck, but it was too far into the dive, and we needed to make our way back to shore. So, unfortunately their pump would have to stay where it was.

All in all, I would highly recommend this dive to anyone. Easy entry, 30 foot average depth, easy navigation, and plenty to see. Excellent dive! Our stuff dried out great in the nice weather...