Diving Vancouver Area Mid-June - Need help!!!

[Chasin' Tales]

My wife and I will be visiting friends in Vancouver ~6/13-6/17. When looking into things to do my wife suggested we explore some of the excellent cold water diving in the area. While most husbands would appluad such a suggestion from thier better half, I have an aversion to cold. Especially cold water. She told me to put my purse down and man up, so it looks like we are going to get a dive or two in while we are there. She just got a housing for the 5D Mkiii and hasn't had a chance to use it yet, hence the excitement on her part.

Our opportunity to dive will probably be Monday 6/16, or Tuesday 6/17. I've glanced at a few dive shop websites, and it looks like most charter trips are on the weekend. Is there affordable charter options for during the week? Or are we limited to guided shore dives? Given that we are moderately experienced divers with ~50 dives under our belt in the Keys and Bonaire, what sites would you recommend? What are the best dive shops in the area? Any other advice?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[DaleC]

I don't know about charters but the two easiest shore dives in the Vancouver area are Whytecliff Marine Park and Porteau Marine Park.
Both will give you a taste of Howe Sound diving and are not current sensitive. Porteau offers 3 small wrecks in the 50' or less range as well as tire, concrete and I beam reefs. Lots of small subjects for a photographer.
With a little more travel, one could go to Britannia Beach and dive a few natural wrecks in the 20-40' range, a Coast Guard vessel and two fishing boats. A very straightforward dive but the visibility is iffy and may be good or bad with no long term predictability.

Hope some of that helps.
Good luck.

 

[Darnold9999]

+1 on Porteau and Whytecliff. Both pretty good local dives. A charter is not going to get you much better for a first dive. I prefer Porteau as it is more photogenic with lots of places for creatures to hide in the wrecks and other artificial structures. A bit of a surface swim to get out, but otherwise an easy dive. Whytecliff is much closer to town and easier to get to. It is where most of the divers in town do their first dives.

Vis in June is not likely to be great. You might get lucky but be prepared for vis that is less than 30 feet and near the surface even less. It is possible for the vis to open up in June but don't count on it.

Three shops I would use in order of my preference, but all three are good people. Ocean Quest in Burnaby, The Edge in North Vancouver and IDC Dive in Vancouver.

 

[Dr Dog]

Hehehe Cold....The ocean is always 45 to 47 f. Come into the interior of BC and dive one of our lovely "tropical" glacier fed dive sites. Dead of September I rarely see anywhere above 40f at depth.

You will love the waters off Vancouver, but Canadian divers are a different breed

 

[Chasin' Tales]

Thanks for the feedback!

That stinks that the vis might not be good. We just got 26 inches/66 cm of rain in two days about two weeks ago here along the gulf coast. Needless to say the vis is going to be poor here for a while. I guess I will check in as it gets closer and see what the vis looks like. Hopefully it will work out.

Regards...

 

[rhuntley]

If you are looking for a charter, I suggest checking out Sea Dragon's schedule; Sea Dragon Charters

As for a dive shop, Ocean Quest is my recommendation; Welcome to Ocean Quest Dive Centre

I second Darnold's recommendations for dive sites while visiting. Good luck!

 

[Dr Dog]

I dove both Porteau and Whytecliff for the first time this past weekend. I have to agree that Porteau is a much better dive site, well to me anyways. Whytecliffe involves a lugging of gear a long way, downhill one way and then the ugly truth...uphill back to your car.

Porteau is a much easier dive to get to, but involves much more swimming. It certainly has more life than Whytecliffe, but that is because Whytecliffe is a wall dive in a big tide area.

 

[Steve_C]

I did the two dives mentioned above. I hired a local DM who arranged everything. Brought my own regs/computers and rented the rest. Enjoyed the dives. Both days we dove there was an algae bloom that made viz very low in the two 10 ft or so of water. But once we dropped below that the viz opened up to 20 or so ft. Lots of neat critters. I have some photos at

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~slc/vanc/vandive

and

www4.ncsu.edu/~slc/vanc2/vandive2

I was diving wet. But never got cold. DM arranged for me to rent a 10/14 wet suit. No problem. DM also picked me up and hotel with equipment and returned me to hotel at the end of the day. Great setup.

I dove with
Vancouver Scuba Diving School
Not sure if they still do this.

Have fun.

 

[cooldives]

Yes - with enough notice, Mark from Vancouver Scuba Diving School can arrange gear and transportation for you both as well as lead you on a couple of mid-week dives and also perhaps take a video of your dive safari for you.