Jan. 2, 2009 Willis Point (Saanich Inlet) photos

[MarkH]

Just a few close-up ones: willispt

 

[wedivebc]

Is it my imagination or is Willis becoming more "alive" than previous years?

 

[r2t]

That pic of you with the jelly is a very cool shot.

 

[TSandM]

I'm enjoying the Saanich Inlet series, because I'm going to be up there the last weekend of this month.

Great spiny crab in the sponge!

 

[MarkH]

Is it my imagination or is Willis becoming more "alive" than previous years?

I think so too. The invertebrate life is still pretty much non-existant. The wall is as bare as usual, but I'm seeing alot more different kinds of fish. My favorite part of the dive has always been around the cloud sponge and the rock "pyramid". On that rock I saw 3 tiger rockfish, 3 lingcod, several copper rockfish and of course the school of yellowtail and black rockfish above it.

 

[MarkH]

I'm enjoying the Saanich Inlet series, because I'm going to be up there the last weekend of this month.

Great spiny crab in the sponge!

Hopefully the visibility will be better for you than it has been in the last couple of days. I suspect it's from all the snow melting. In past years, it's been common to see visibility of 50-100 feet in Dec/Jan/Feb/March. Hopefully you aren't expecting colourful, life-smothered rocks. Saanich Inlet, in my opinion, can look almost like a lake dive with all the bare rock. I do like it for the dramatic topography (lots of walls going deep), pretty reliably good visibility and of course, cloud sponges. You can have some pretty amazing dives here, swimming down a wall that goes down to who knows how deep, then coming to a ledge covered with cloud sponges and looking up to see the boat on the surface 120 feet above you. And keep in mind that the whole Southern half of Saanich Inlet is one big series of underwater cliffs, pinnacles, canyons, etc. leaving divers a huge area to explore.

 

[TSandM]

Thanks for the warning . . . Since my only Canadian dive experience was out of Nanaimo, I confess I had envisioned walls covered with invertebrates, as we saw there. But dramatic topography and cloud sponges will do, and seeing Tiger or China rockfish would make the trip exciting for me.

 

[firstdive2005]

Great shots, thanks for taking the time. That spot at Saanich is it a boat dive or do you access from the shore? thanks kev

 

[MarkH]

Thanks for the warning . . . Since my only Canadian dive experience was out of Nanaimo, I confess I had envisioned walls covered with invertebrates, as we saw there. But dramatic topography and cloud sponges will do, and seeing Tiger or China rockfish would make the trip exciting for me.

There are lots of tiger rockfish in the Inlet, but I've never seen a China rockfish. They are seen closer to the open ocean (Strait of Juan de Fuca/ Port Hardy). In the latest issue of Scuba Diving magazine it says to go to Willis Point for China rockfish, but I have no idea where they got that from.

 

[MarkH]

Great shots, thanks for taking the time. That spot at Saanich is it a boat dive or do you access from the shore? thanks kev

That's a shore dive. Here's the link to the main page for that site: http://victoriadiving.awardspace.com/willispt.html