Campbell River August 2021

[White Chocolate]

Last August we made our first trip to Vancouver Island after the re-opening of the border. Earl at Abyssal Charters in Campbell River was our awesome host for the weekend. We picked a low tidal exchange weekend and filled the boat with a select group of Puget Sound divers/photographers in order to access some of the more current sensitive sites. The first dive at Seymour Narrows was pretty awesome. The current can run up to 16 knots on big exchanges which means a lot of very clean substrate and small colorful invertebrates covering everything. My TG-6 prefers macro but my brain was overwhelmed by the colors and wide angle possibilities so I had a really hard time focusing on picture taking. The funniest part for me was being surrounded by a sea of color and clear water but somehow I spotted a skeleton shrimp and took my favorite photo of the dive













After some whale watching we did a second dive under the Argonaught Wharf, which is pretty famous for wide angle photos of the pilings and lots of octos on the bottom. I did my own thing and took a bunch of pictures of slugs instead









After that we ate some food and went to Steep Island. The current was still a little swirly when we dropped down on the worms, and the visibility dropped due to a massive cloud of worm poop. I followed Jess down below the overhang but she kept scaring candy stripe shrimp away so I had to ditch her and make friends with a few more before she could send them into hiding.

 

[White Chocolate]

The second day we hit April Point Wall across the channel for our first dive. Fields of strawberry anemones covered the rocks and it was absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately my strobe flooded at the start which led to some mediocre photos.





Our second dive was at Copper Cliff off slack. We dropped in and explored the boulder fiend looking for king crabs and tiger rockfish until the current calmed down enough to explore the wall. I was able to rig my backup strobe but my TG6 was not set up for the mostly wide angle opportunities and I was getting tired, so photo wise it wasn’t very productive.







I had a ferry to catch and couldn’t jump on the third boat dive of the day, but I did stop on the way to Nanaimo for an easy shore dive at Tyee Cove to finish the trip. The highlight was a big Tiger Rockfish that was as interested in my camera as I was of it!

 

[Agamemnon]

Beautiful shots!

 

[cleung]

These are great - thanks for sharing! Did you see any seals or sea lions during dives?

 

[JohnN]

Last August we made our first trip to Vancouver Island after the re-opening of the border. Earl at Abyssal Charters in Campbell River was our awesome host for the weekend. We picked a low tidal exchange weekend and filled the boat with a select group of Puget Sound divers/photographers in order to access some of the more current sensitive sites. The first dive at Seymour Narrows was pretty awesome. The current can run up to 16 knots on big exchanges which means a lot of very clean substrate and small colorful invertebrates covering everything. My TG-6 prefers macro but my brain was overwhelmed by the colors and wide angle possibilities so I had a really hard time focusing on picture taking. The funniest part for me was being surrounded by a sea of color and clear water but somehow I spotted a skeleton shrimp and took my favorite photo of the dive













After some whale watching we did a second dive under the Argonaught Wharf, which is pretty famous for wide angle photos of the pilings and lots of octos on the bottom. I did my own thing and took a bunch of pictures of slugs instead









After that we ate some food and went to Steep Island. The current was still a little swirly when we dropped down on the worms, and the visibility dropped due to a massive cloud of worm poop. I followed Jess down below the overhang but she kept scaring candy stripe shrimp away so I had to ditch her and make friends with a few more before she could send them into hiding.

Nice pictures.