What can YOU teach me?

[Mike Boswell]

Up here in British Columbia - something that has yet to be mentioned is that there is no such thing as a guided dive with a DM unless you specifically hire such a person. You are on your own, and expected to be able to plan a dive and navigate whatever it is down there on your own and come back on your own. (With a buddy of course.)

Typical dive brief is, current is coming from that direction, keep the rock on your left, go down swim around come back up, best stuff is at X feet. Watch for Y - wolf eels, octo etc.

There is a range of diving for every ability from easy shore entries, to high current diving. Vis can range from can't see your hand in front of your face to 100+ feet. Time of year and location make a huge difference. Vancouver Island alone is some 300 miles long and that is just the largest of many many islands. The possibilities are more than most will ever exhaust in a lifetime.

My wife and I did a couple of dives at Nanaimo last year. I was surprised at how warm the water was. There are some really beautiful critters up there. I can't wait to get back to Vancouver Island and check out the diving up north. They say it was on Cousteau's list of the world's best places to dive.

 

[Darnold9999]

Next time see if you can get up to Port Hardy and get out to Browning Pass and the dive sites nearby or failing that Quadra island - both are head and shoulders beyond Naniamo diving. Not that Naniamo is bad, these are just spectacular. Browning Pass is a bit hard to get to, but as a destination well worth it.

 

[TSandM]

Port Hardy . . . ahhhhh, Port Hardy. I've been a lot of places in a lot of parts of the world, and of places without caves, Port Hardy takes the cake.

Diving there is boat diving, from either of two resorts or from a liveaboard. The topography is a whole mess of little islets, topped with evergreens and often sporting grey stone cliffs into the water. Bald eagles abound, and sea lions and otters dot the surface. Currents are extremely powerful, so a knowledgeable boatman who can put you in the right place at the right time is important.

The water is cold, but the viz can be fabulous. We didn't hit it at the very best time, and we still had anything from 30 to probably 60 or 70 feet. Light filters through the cool, green water, down through the kelp, and illuminates walls with life so dense you can't even sort out what is what at the beginning. The colors are astonishing -- oranges and yellows and pinks and purples, and cream and white and the improbably China rockfish in stunning indigo blue and yellow.

Some dives are sheer walls, others are cascades of boulders. Depths range from technical to shallow. It's all live drop and live pickup, so you never have to fight current, if you get caught in it, but a signal buoy is an awfully good idea.

Weather can change very quickly, and can be daunting. We had 87 mph winds on one of the days we were there.

Overall, if you are comfortable diving cold water (mid 40's), Port Hardy ought to be on your bucket list. We WILL go back.

 

[gcbryan]

I haven't made it to Port Hardy yet but Quadra Island is my favorite BC dive site by far. It's interesting that so many people go to Nanaimo but as Darnold9999 mentions Quadra Island is in a different league. No one would go to Nanaimo if it weren't for the ships and the fact that it's closer.

Quadra Island to me is fairly close to the descriptions I've heard of Port Hardy. I was there in the winter and the viz was close to 100 feet and several degree colder than the winter temps here and the surface temps were quite a bit colder (snow). It was as colorful underwater as anywhere in the tropics. I'm thinking in particular of the site know as "Row or Be Damned".

 

[Mike Boswell]

I haven't made it to Port Hardy yet but Quadra Island is my favorite BC dive site by far. It's interesting that so many people go to Nanaimo but as Darnold9999 mentions Quadra Island is in a different league. No one would go to Nanaimo if it weren't for the ships and the fact that it's closer.

Quadra Island to me is fairly close to the descriptions I've heard of Port Hardy. I was there in the winter and the viz was close to 100 feet and several degree colder than the winter temps here and the surface temps were quite a bit colder (snow). It was as colorful underwater as anywhere in the tropics. I'm thinking in particular of the site know as "Row or Be Damned".

We were there on horse business, but we managed to squeak in a little pleasure, too. We also drove over to Ucluelet to see the critters in the aquarium there, and visited Tofino. GOT to make it to Quadra and Port Hardy - Anything that gets Lynne to wax poetic is bound to be majestic.

Might be time for that drysuit class....

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I haven't made it to Port Hardy yet but Quadra Island is my favorite BC dive site by far. It's interesting that so many people go to Nanaimo but as Darnold9999 mentions Quadra Island is in a different league. No one would go to Nanaimo if it weren't for the ships and the fact that it's closer.

Quadra Island to me is fairly close to the descriptions I've heard of Port Hardy. I was there in the winter and the viz was close to 100 feet and several degree colder than the winter temps here and the surface temps were quite a bit colder (snow). It was as colorful underwater as anywhere in the tropics. I'm thinking in particular of the site know as "Row or Be Damned".

Port Hardy is Quadra Island on steroids ... having been to both places, I'd have to say the diving at PH, or to be more accurate, in Browning Pass, is far superior to Quadra Island.

That said, I like the dives at QI ... the walls are fantastic. But the currents really do limit you to two dives a day. PH offers a much better selection of sites that allow you to get in three or even four dives per day.

But I'm unlikely to go back to Quadra Island, frankly, because there's only two dive ops and they both left me with less than positive impressions based on how they deal with their clients. Mike's got a mouth that would make a sailor blush, and Earl spent the entire three days yelling at me for breaking house rules that he never told me about ... since he overbooked his lodge and put me and Cheng in a hotel room so that we ended up missing all the briefings. Both places left me with less than pleasant experiences, despite the great diving. Since there are so many other really good options on Vancouver Island, I decided my money is better spent elsewhere.

I agree with you about Nanaimo. Although there are some good dive sites besides the wrecks (Dodd's Narrows, Jesse Island and Snake Island Wall come immediately to mind) ... if that's all there was I'd just stay on the mainland and dive Howe Sound ... or head over to Victoria. But the wrecks are a huge draw, and are certainly the reason why so many divers want to go there. It doesn't hurt that there's two ferry terminals in town, making it relatively easy to get there.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Puget Sound has many similarities to Southern California. The water is colder -- mid 40's in winter, mid 50's in summer. And the viz is typically worse: ten feet or so in summer, maybe 20 in winter, and a few days better or worse. Exposure protection is a BIG part of having fun diving here.

Puget Sound is also full of currents, and the current-sensitive sites are often the prettiest, and have the most life. Understanding how to read tide and current charts, and having the specific information about a given site, is very important. Some sites are counterintuitive -- one very current-sensitive site is not at all good to dive on flat exchanges. Another can be dived on big floods, but not even on moderate ebbs.

Because of the number of rivers and streams that dump into the Sound, the bottoms are often very silty. Good buoyancy control and a mastery of non-silting kicks is important for being able to return the way you came.

The high number of particulates in the water means it gets dark fast, even in the daytime. Good dive lights are more than a convenience here.

Of course, the cold water and the high particulate count also means lots of nutrients in the water, so there is a TON of life here! Photographers should plan on macro, though -- wide angle photography is a definite gamble here.

This is about as close to wide-angle as conditions allow here ...

And although the majority of our marine life would fall into the category of small, inverterbrate type things (we have over 100 different species of nudibranchs in Puget Sound), we also boast some of the largest octopus on the planet ... this one's on the order of about 20 feet (over six meters) tip-to-tip ...

... and sometimes, if you're truly lucky ... a sea lion will come to play ...

Most shore diving site entries are fairly easy, and we have no surf. Weather conditions almost never preclude diving, although they may rule out certain sites. We don't have blown out springs like SoCal has had!

Despite our cold climate you can easily dive here year-round ... and no matter what the weather's doing, there's always a sheltered site somewhere to dive.

Or earthquakes, either, I guess. We just had two, ten minutes ago, that had me rattling in my chair.

Oh, we get quakes ... sometimes big ones. The 2001 Nisqually quake rearranged some dive sites, in fact. There's a large break in Day Island Wall that didn't used to be there ... and parts of Lobster Shop Wall moved way downslope from where they used to be ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Mike Boswell]

This is about as close to wide-angle as conditions allow here ...

And although the majority of our marine life would fall into the category of small, inverterbrate type things (we have over 100 different species of nudibranchs in Puget Sound), we also boast some of the largest octopus on the planet ... this one's on the order of about 20 feet (over six meters) tip-to-tip ...

... and sometimes, if you're truly lucky ... a sea lion will come to play ...




Despite our cold climate you can easily dive here year-round ... and no matter what the weather's doing, there's always a sheltered site somewhere to dive.


Oh, we get quakes ... sometimes big ones. The 2001 Nisqually quake rearranged some dive sites, in fact. There's a large break in Day Island Wall that didn't used to be there ... and parts of Lobster Shop Wall moved way downslope from where they used to be ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Wow! Thanks, Bob, for the beautiful pictures. I wanna go...NOW!

BTW, that sea lion was wearing split fins and flapping her arms.... tsk tsk. :shocked2:

 

[Van Isle]

One of the tricks to diving southern Vancouver Island, just S. of Vancouver and N. of Seattle, is exposure protection management. Though the water is "cold water," even in the summer, the surface climate is Mediterranean, which can mean 80-90F or over 30C during hot summer stretches. Staying hydrated throughout the day, gearing up slowly but efficiently, trying not to sweat in to your long johns, undergarments, and drysuit on the hikes to the dive sites all add to the charm.

Big tidal exchanges, currents, rocky shore entries usually without surf, and the cold, dark, deep, scary water make for character-building dives. Critter life is usually small-medium to small, so folks used to seeing mantas, huge eels, etc, need to learn to slow down to see the plethora of critters that are present.