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February 2005
Sail Fin Rocks.
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A foggy Saturday morning brought us
to a rock about a 1/4 mile off shore right below the old power station on
Bare point just outside Chemainus Harbour.
The charts for Stuart Channel indicate a rock at a depth of 8.5
Meters. After quite a bit of searching we could only find a bottom profile
that came up to about 18 meters. Tossing the anchor in and rolling off the
boat we headed down. Reaching the bottom we found a rather smooth large
rock hummock at indeed 18 meters.
After doing a survey of the area surrounding our anchor, we headed
east, then North. The area has quite a lot of good sized Orange Plumose
The perimter of the rock is in about 20 meters of water.
Although we continued to see lots of Plumose through out the dive we only
saw a hand full of rock fish. They all appeared to be black rock fish
sometimes called Sea bass, around here. Heading some distance North we finally came around the north end of the
rock and started to head back in a south west direction.
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| For more dive sites
in this area check out Bare Point and Bare
rock. |
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We did find the
odd Sea cucumber and Nudibranch, and although we saw lots of crab shell,
we did not see any crab. Now whether they have been fished out by
people or Octopus there is no way to know. Swimming for some time it
appeared as if we were coming up on the southern tip of the rock we had
been swimming when another large rock appeared in the distance a little
farther west. Heading in that direction we found some lost prawn and crab
traps. Heading south west along this new rock was where we found a Sail
Fin Sculpin about 6 to 8 inches long, hence the name of the rocks. We
followed this new rock around until we got to an area that dropped off where
we headed down to about 25 meters. Here we found quite a lot of
interesting topology, a shear wall with more rock fish, brittle stars, and
sea cucumber. The rock face we were swimming along broke up into several
Large boulders that you could swim around and through, the terrain then
started to lead us back North past the crab traps and towards our point of
entry. Swimming through more plumose forests, we came back up to the 18
meter level where getting low on air we started our ascent.
We called this Sail fin rocks because it appeared that the reef was
made up of two major large rocks, of which the coolest resident was the
Little Sail Fin Sculpin. It was not rich with life but was kind of a fun
dive. The water seemed a lot warmer today compared to dives of the past
weeks. Viz was a little less about 10 meters, warmer water must be
starting some bloom, Herring season will soon be upon us. |
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