Sunday - September 02, 2007

Vancouver, BC diving

 Back in the water!

Did some diving on our family trip to Vancouver, BC in August.  We (Garry, Cedric and myself) took an 8:30 ferry reservation (more on that later) from Horseshoe bay to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.  From there, we hopped on the Christie Bay No. 1 from Ocean Explorers Diving. 

We were scheduled to do a wreck dive first and a wall dive for the second dive, but the winds weren't favorable.  The dive crew suggested we do two wreck dives instead so we went to the HMCS Cape Breton, which is a merchant ship from 1953.  The ship is still very intact since it's protected by Snake Island and has only been down for six years.  The plume anemones were bountiful.  There were a few fish here and there, but not a lot of fish.  The visibility was poor due to the plankton bloom.  The first 20 feet of the dive were 5 to 10 foot of visibility.  Once we broke through that layer, the distance improved but so much of the light was choked out that you couldn't see very far.  It was a 27 minute dive with a max depth of 85' or so.  The 85' is very misleading since a large portion of the dive was spent on the bridge section which is only around 60'  It varies a bit depending on the tides, we were diving at slack tide.

Next we headed out to our 2nd dive, the HMCS Saskatchewan.  It's a Mackenzie class destroyer commissioned in 1963.  There's a great quicktime movie of the sinking here.  This dive was awesome.  There were far more fish and seastars on the Saskatchewan.  Also the super structure is far more extensive offering much more to see at a shallower depth.  We made it to both the for and aft guns, but spent most our time around the bridge tower.  The visibility was the same as the first dive, but it felt a lot colder than the 52F registered.  It was a 29 minute dive with a max depth of 90 feet or so.  Again a lot of the dive was on the much shallower bridge tower.  There were lots of interesting things on this dive and I would love to do it again, especially as a trained wreck diver.

Both dives are within feet of each other here: