Wednesday Night Dives at Whytecliff

Last night’s Meetup Dive at Whytecliff was remarkable. The tide and weather conditions were perfect, some very cool animals were encountered, and no one received a parking ticket. Visibility was about 8 metres at all depths with practically no current.

Everyone entered the water together. I am always impressed by how people help each other out with fins and buddy checks. Dave needed a couple more pounds to descend and he and I worked together to get out my trim lead and install it into his BCD. Teamwork makes the dream work! Once everyone was good to go, we submerged (no punishing surface swims for us!) and we began gradually navigating down the slope keeping the topography on our right.

Sean and Colby were rocking their sidemount setups and went ahead of the group for a deeper dive. Congratulations to Colby! It was his second dive as a new sidemount diver.

Were we soon pelted by a school of sardines attracted by our lights. There were lots of shiner perch, crabs, shrimp and spot prawns all doing their thing on the sea floor.

Paul‘s Bottle Rock had a good collection of old bottles. We turned about 30° towards the wall where Noel and I found a small sponge with a grunt sculpin inside.

The Rocktopus was home in its den below the crack at about 20 metres. Jon and I had a solid 15 minutes with this animal out in the open last week, but last night it was snoozing. After everyone checked it out, we headed to the Anemone Garden where we explored for a few minutes. Kerry spotted a sailfin sculpin, and we turned around to head home to shore. Chris and Ling were buzzed by a large seal on the way back! It was using our dive lights to capture fish.