I listed this as January's dive because it was so amazing that it all worked out. We had just had the worst snow storm followed by such torrential rains that people were concerned that no one in there neighborhood had built an ark. Visibility everywhere was zero or less, the water was various shades of gray and brown depending on how close to a river or storm drain you were.

We did'nt think we would be diving until, Sherri Drouilliard of NTD SERVICES our dive instructor called Friday afternoon to enquire what the visibility was up in our area as she had to do the final dive with my son for his dry suit certification. The answer was "not good" in fact I had told one of my regular dive buddies "I wouldn't be wasting any air this weekend". But then I remembered that I had noticed a narrow band of clearish water just off Bare point over the last couple of days going back and forth from Chemainus in the boat and had noted how much clearer it was at the dock in Chemainus than it was out in the channel. So a dive started to develop in my mind. I explained to Sherri that there were three rocks about a mile and a half off shore spaced about a half a mile apart along the Chemainus shoreline that I was interested in checking out as a new dive site. The rocks are in about 30 to 40 feet of water with ledges dropping off on the east side going down to 120ft. So I proposed that if this was a suitable dive and she was prepared to drive back to town without diving that we would check out the viz as best we could from the boat on the way over to picking her up in Chemainus and give her a call. So Saturday came round after another long night or torrential rain fall. We tried to contact some one that new the meaning of good viz that could go down to the government dock and give us an assessment without having to head over in the boat. No luck, so head over we did.

We headed south following the broken rock and boulders along the bottom skirting the east side of this giant rock outcrop at a depth of about 60ft. To be honest not  a real great dive but interesting enough. A few greenlings, and fewer rock cod. Evidence of Octopus habitat but no Octopus, lots of Orange Plumose and a number of Sea Cucumbers. When it looked like we had reached the end  of the rock out crop we circled around and headed up and along the top of the rock, back towards the boat. As we started getting into shallower water the temperature started to drop so we headed back down to the 40 ft level where the temperature was a bit more to our liking. The top of the rock was a series of rifts filled with sand and covered with kelp and seaweed of various kinds providing habitat to Sea star, Sea squirts, Mid-Shipman's, Crab etc. As we continued to swim north we could see that the water was beginning to get cloudy, and not getting any warmer, (for those of us that did not have new super deluxe thermal underwear, Sherri was testing a new product line). So figuring we were pretty close to the boat we decided to ascend, Sherri checking Alexander out for proper control as he went. A Three minute safety stop and a short swim to the boat saw us pulling anchor heading back for the dock reveling in how we had probably had the only good dive on the east side of Vancouver Island that day and how warm Sherri was.

Thanks to Sherri Drouilliard of Nitrogen Therapy Diving Services for the Excellent Dive instruction.  Alexander is now a certified drysuit diver.                    THANKS SHERRI !!!!!

UPDATE Feb 5th 2005: Check out Cod Head Reef and Sea Gull Reef .