Sintax604
Contributor
I couldn't find ANY info about the sites on Bowen online so here's my contribution:
I took Monday off to head over to Bowen island with a buddy. We dove Smuggler's Cove and then Seymour Bay following descriptions in the "80 Dives" book which, as it turns out are horribly inaccurate. On both dives we got killed on our NDLs while we were searching for the actual sites.
Smuggler's Cove.
We got to the site and found a cul-de-sac and a long (200-300M) grass road/path down to the water which was blocked by a metal gate and "no trespassing" signs. The signs appeared to be of the Canadian Tire variety with no indication of the governing body who put them there or enforces anything. After very little deliberation by my double-130 diving buddy, we decided to open the gate (it wasn't locked) and drive down the path where we parked 20' from the water.
Entry was fairly easy, just some medium sized rocks and logs to walk over. The ACTUAL dive is along the outside wall which makes up the little cove, heading west. It's a seemingly bottomless wall (we made it to 117' with lots more room below) with the usual sponges and their inhabitants. We saw a warbonnet, golfball crabs, a big grunt sculpin, lots of lions mane jellies, and a ton of rockfish and lingcod. The highlight for me was 2 schools of baby quillback rockfish - very cute. Overall, it was a very good dive, but nothing spectacular.
Seymour Bay.
30 minutes dive away, this site is in the middle of a construction zone on a very nice stretch of beach. This is the most beautiful dive I've done to date.
The dive here is located on the far side (north east) of the "islet" which is on the right hand side of the bay. Again, this is a bottomless wall with very interesting topography. At depth (100ish feet) the rock is covered in feather stars, tons of em! Again lots of lions manes, anenomes, etc. The real pleasure of this site resides at about 30' where the rock is literally saturated with every kind of starfish you can image, schools of perch, rockfish and those black guys with the yellow tails (still can't figure out what they are). HUGE individual strands of kelp fly like flags in the middle of all this. I felt like saluting them, it was THAT impressive looking. We also saw a great sculpin (a first for me) and lots of little red flabellina nudis.
Definitely worth the $46 ferry ride.
I took Monday off to head over to Bowen island with a buddy. We dove Smuggler's Cove and then Seymour Bay following descriptions in the "80 Dives" book which, as it turns out are horribly inaccurate. On both dives we got killed on our NDLs while we were searching for the actual sites.
Smuggler's Cove.
We got to the site and found a cul-de-sac and a long (200-300M) grass road/path down to the water which was blocked by a metal gate and "no trespassing" signs. The signs appeared to be of the Canadian Tire variety with no indication of the governing body who put them there or enforces anything. After very little deliberation by my double-130 diving buddy, we decided to open the gate (it wasn't locked) and drive down the path where we parked 20' from the water.
Entry was fairly easy, just some medium sized rocks and logs to walk over. The ACTUAL dive is along the outside wall which makes up the little cove, heading west. It's a seemingly bottomless wall (we made it to 117' with lots more room below) with the usual sponges and their inhabitants. We saw a warbonnet, golfball crabs, a big grunt sculpin, lots of lions mane jellies, and a ton of rockfish and lingcod. The highlight for me was 2 schools of baby quillback rockfish - very cute. Overall, it was a very good dive, but nothing spectacular.
Seymour Bay.
30 minutes dive away, this site is in the middle of a construction zone on a very nice stretch of beach. This is the most beautiful dive I've done to date.
The dive here is located on the far side (north east) of the "islet" which is on the right hand side of the bay. Again, this is a bottomless wall with very interesting topography. At depth (100ish feet) the rock is covered in feather stars, tons of em! Again lots of lions manes, anenomes, etc. The real pleasure of this site resides at about 30' where the rock is literally saturated with every kind of starfish you can image, schools of perch, rockfish and those black guys with the yellow tails (still can't figure out what they are). HUGE individual strands of kelp fly like flags in the middle of all this. I felt like saluting them, it was THAT impressive looking. We also saw a great sculpin (a first for me) and lots of little red flabellina nudis.
Definitely worth the $46 ferry ride.
