For everyones first expertise on Vancouver Island, I’d counsel going to see Erin at Ogden’s Level Dive Store and getting geared as much as take a dive alongside the Ogden breakwater point jaco. It’s completely value diving a number of instances.
A lot of the 12 months, there’s a ton of kelp rising alongside all the size of the purpose, so getting in generally is a little tough should you don’t need all the kelp forest wrapped round your tank, so I counsel a back-roll entry after which a gradual heads-up swim via the kelp to a transparent descent location.
As soon as down, hold a detailed eye out for Octopus, the gorgeous anemone that encompass the realm, Dungeness Crabs, Wolf Eels and Seals, which might come out of nowhere and big Lingcod.
It’s fairly merely a beautiful shore dive and one that would simply take up a full week of your time. There are 5 entry factors, every progressively deeper, so begin Monday at both finish and there is a good week of diving.
Then there are the wrecks. We dove the MacKenzie and on our approach out, as we had been approaching the positioning, a Humpback Whale broke the floor simply as I used to be coming into the water, not thirty toes away.
The dive itself is superb however I counsel you make each effort to reach at slack tide. In any other case, you might be in for a lower than completely comfy descent. Nonetheless, as soon as on the wreck, there’s a lot to see. Once we had been there, there was an enormous Pacific Octopus dwelling beneath the wreck.
The opposite space we visited was Race Rocks. Fairly a beautiful location. The rocks themselves had been coated with California Sea Lions, Stellars and Elephant Seals and let me inform you, should you’ve by no means been near a Elephant Seal earlier than, they’re massive. And uncommon. It’s believed there are lower than 500 on this planet. Between 2,000 and three,000 male California sea lions migrate to south Vancouver Island waters to winter.
Race Rocks is a protected marine space near open ocean 12 nautical miles from Victoria. Once you go to, please take a guided tour as this can be a Canadian Treasure, to make certain.
To view the photographic version of this story, go to [http://www.oceansedge.com]
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Steve Roper is a PADI Grasp Scuba Diver Coach with a number of speciality certifications, together with Underwater Naturalist, Images, Superior Navigation, Night time, Deep and Drift Diving, Nitrox and Tri-Gasoline Combine (for particulars on Nitrox and Tri-Gasoline, see techie stuff). He has been diving for nicely over 20 years.
His travels have taken him from Montreal all through all the Caribbean, each coasts of the USA, Vancouver Island, the Pacific Northwest, a lot of Central America and extra lately, Fiji.