A Howe Sound Weekend
Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2019 7:34 am
Howdy
ScubaJess, SM, VJW and I went up to Howe Sound, just north of Vancouver for the weekend. If you haven't been there, it is an absolutely beautiful fjord, which has an amazingly remote feel considering it is so close to the Vancouver Metro area. If you've ever drove up to Whistler, you'd have passed it on your left. Mountains tower up right against the sea.
We dove thru Sea Dragon Charters on the Topline. We met up with Steve T and Maz, two of the better UW photographers in the Vancouver area. We also got to dive with our friend and photographer Jennifer T from WA and met a bunch of other nice people on the boat.
Not a lot of current passes thru the area. Diving is on dusty rocks and along dramatic walls. If you've dove WhiteCliff/Kelvin, it's variations on that theme. We didn't see tons of invertebrates or colors as say Quadra Island, or even Keystone, but there was some cool stuff.
I'm not usually a depth junky but part of the highlight of those dives was going down and looking at the boot sponges + quillback rockfish on the massive walls -- so alien like and different than our usual diving. The best place to find critters was on the cloud sponges at Hackett. Another highlight was swimming amongst huge schools of yellow tails and shiners on some of the walls.
It was amazing how in some places brittle stars absolutely covered everything...
Viz was great at depth, a bit murky in the shallows
Overall, a very fun adventure! Food/beer after at the nearby Troller's Pub.
Hope you all had a great weekend!
ScubaJess, SM, VJW and I went up to Howe Sound, just north of Vancouver for the weekend. If you haven't been there, it is an absolutely beautiful fjord, which has an amazingly remote feel considering it is so close to the Vancouver Metro area. If you've ever drove up to Whistler, you'd have passed it on your left. Mountains tower up right against the sea.
We dove thru Sea Dragon Charters on the Topline. We met up with Steve T and Maz, two of the better UW photographers in the Vancouver area. We also got to dive with our friend and photographer Jennifer T from WA and met a bunch of other nice people on the boat.
Not a lot of current passes thru the area. Diving is on dusty rocks and along dramatic walls. If you've dove WhiteCliff/Kelvin, it's variations on that theme. We didn't see tons of invertebrates or colors as say Quadra Island, or even Keystone, but there was some cool stuff.
I'm not usually a depth junky but part of the highlight of those dives was going down and looking at the boot sponges + quillback rockfish on the massive walls -- so alien like and different than our usual diving. The best place to find critters was on the cloud sponges at Hackett. Another highlight was swimming amongst huge schools of yellow tails and shiners on some of the walls.
It was amazing how in some places brittle stars absolutely covered everything...
Viz was great at depth, a bit murky in the shallows
Overall, a very fun adventure! Food/beer after at the nearby Troller's Pub.
Hope you all had a great weekend!