two.crows
Contributor
Inspired by ScubaSteve001's quest for shore dive opportunities in the GTA (*) I sampled the waters at the end of Leslie Street / Tommy Thompson Park today.
Access from Leslie Street, parking at the Tommy-Thompson park parking (1) or better on Unwin Avenue. From there it's about a 200m (300 steps) walk to the shoreline along a path just East of the Park road. There is an eroded ledge of about 1.2 m height just at the edge of the water. The shore is the usual rocky landfill of Toronto's waterfront with the occasional piece of rebar sticking out - careful.
Entry is over small rocks, reaching hip height water after about 10m. Visibility today was quite poor (measured 1.4 m with a Secchi disk). The scenery is rocks, gobis, gobis, landfill and more gobis ... if you've seen Humber Bay, you'll feel right at home here. However Humber is deeper: here I had to go about 200 m out until I hit 4m depth. I turned after half an hour and had used up all of a quarter of my Al-80 in the end.
All in all, not too bad if the visibility would be better. There's lots of curious stuff in the water and the landfill rocks give some structure to what would otherwise be a flat bed of silt. I had hoped for better viz, seing that the wind had been a weak WNW i.e. almost exactly off-shore and no waves. As this was my first dive out here I have no idea whether this would be typical or poor.
This site's plus is that it's a real shoredive. But I'll try getting out further South in the Park with a cart or bike next time.
The site is very close to Toronto's main sewage plant, as you can see from the satellite images. However since it's also very close to the Beaches, I expect water quality to be about the same. I took a shot of disinfectant anyway after getting home (cherry spirits from a small Black Forest distillery can't hurt to be sure).
(1) Careful! the Tommy Thompson Park gates are locked at 18:00 and the guys locking the gates have fun locking straggling cars in - almost happened to me. That would have been a fun taxi-ride back home in full scuba gear.
Some pictures below.
Cheers,
two.crows
Access from Leslie Street, parking at the Tommy-Thompson park parking (1) or better on Unwin Avenue. From there it's about a 200m (300 steps) walk to the shoreline along a path just East of the Park road. There is an eroded ledge of about 1.2 m height just at the edge of the water. The shore is the usual rocky landfill of Toronto's waterfront with the occasional piece of rebar sticking out - careful.
Entry is over small rocks, reaching hip height water after about 10m. Visibility today was quite poor (measured 1.4 m with a Secchi disk). The scenery is rocks, gobis, gobis, landfill and more gobis ... if you've seen Humber Bay, you'll feel right at home here. However Humber is deeper: here I had to go about 200 m out until I hit 4m depth. I turned after half an hour and had used up all of a quarter of my Al-80 in the end.
All in all, not too bad if the visibility would be better. There's lots of curious stuff in the water and the landfill rocks give some structure to what would otherwise be a flat bed of silt. I had hoped for better viz, seing that the wind had been a weak WNW i.e. almost exactly off-shore and no waves. As this was my first dive out here I have no idea whether this would be typical or poor.
This site's plus is that it's a real shoredive. But I'll try getting out further South in the Park with a cart or bike next time.
The site is very close to Toronto's main sewage plant, as you can see from the satellite images. However since it's also very close to the Beaches, I expect water quality to be about the same. I took a shot of disinfectant anyway after getting home (cherry spirits from a small Black Forest distillery can't hurt to be sure).
(1) Careful! the Tommy Thompson Park gates are locked at 18:00 and the guys locking the gates have fun locking straggling cars in - almost happened to me. That would have been a fun taxi-ride back home in full scuba gear.
Some pictures below.
Cheers,
two.crows
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Shoreline(ViewNorth).jpg55.3 KB · Views: 92
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TheLedge(ViewWest).jpg54.6 KB · Views: 73
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Shoreline(ViewSouth).jpg61.7 KB · Views: 78
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Entry(ViewEast).jpg64.9 KB · Views: 96
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Scenery.jpg42 KB · Views: 88
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Gobi.jpg75.2 KB · Views: 91
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GobisAndGears.jpg84.6 KB · Views: 94
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Artefact.jpg74.5 KB · Views: 94