It couldn't have been a better day with Sea Dragon Charters. It was a very full boat though, and I'm glad that we didn't have anyone else along with as much gear as we had. There were at least 15 divers on board.
Once out at the Annapolis, we got into the water first to clear the deck. We also decided and planned a long two hour dive instead of coming back to the boat. We figured this would be easier with the amount of gear we had. Our first stop was Station B, away from the ship. The line that had been run the previous year was still in place, but it was covered in brown gunk and difficult to see. Once at Station B, we found the float and Secchi Disk in disarray. Vlad touched the float and it broke away and took off to the surface. The metal clasp that had been used had just rusted straight through. We realized that we'd have to replace all that with plastic zip ties later.
Vlad deployed and attached his temperature sensor, and also snapped a great picture of me.
Next we scootered around the ship. We checked out the stern, where there seemed to be a million shrimp. We also noticed ripples in the hull metal from the sinking. It seemed to stand out more, or maybe I'd missed it on previous dives. Vlad commented later that the area around the props seemed more excavated, maybe due to water action. We scootered through the swim throughs, down the breeze-ways, checked out the mortar bay, helicopter bay, and just about everywhere. With scooters it was very easy to see everything several times. On the bow, the railing seemed damaged on the port side, probably by getting hooked by someone's anchor. We actually started to run out of things to do!
We visited Station A above the bridge and took visibility readings there (as we had at Station B). I headed in to the bridge to try and do some photos, but none of those turned out. It was still fun!
In terms of life, there were even more shrimp and green urchins. I counted several copper and quillback rockfish, and submitted those to the Vancouver Aquarium Rockfish Abundance Survey. In the helicopter bay, there were a large abundance of scallops. The plumose anemones were really growing, and were everywhere. They were especially starting to grow from the ceilings in many areas.
Back on the boat, Nick from OceanQuest dive center was out on his sailboat, and actually recovered the float from Station B. Quite a lucky find! We would have to replace that on the next dive.
I put together a short video if you would like to see more:
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