Oh man ... Whytecliff Park ... its Da bomb for cloud sponges ... this is my 4 th trip there and the sponges are massive ... but here is the report
Me, scubajess, and Yellow headed up to canada ... EH ? from everett its only 2.5 hours ...so its the same amount of drive for me to go to sund rock as it is to get to there... or 3 tree at 430 in rush Hour traffic ..
once over the boarder we headed north on 15 ... then over onto hwy 1 .. but the GPS had us detour onto east 1 headed to hope for some reason ??? After that we got to the park at bout 1030 am ... Now this place is Just like cove 2 on a saturday or sunday ... its Heavily used by divers and students, and It was a Packed house on saturday... So I opted to dive the Cut because i knew we would have parking and a easy way to get in ...
The Cut ...
Divers Getting ready and checking Gear ..
So once we got ready to go .. we made our way down to the water and the cut .... Its better to dive the Cut on a high Tide because there are large Rocks on the ground and a big tree in your way to get out off the shore line... it can be also tricky if you have camera gear , stage bottles, and other dive stuff clipped to yourself.... on a high tide you just float over it and kick out.. So the plan was to see sponges first and then turn, follow the Structure back up and into the cut ... Once we dropped the shallows Today here were very silty and also there was a fresh water Halocline at about 35 feet , so it was pretty cloudy on both dives in the shallows ... BUT once we hit below 70 Feet it was wide open , I mean it was Beautiful clear vis ... as I saw the sponges come into view i was like Dang this is really nice vis.. its nice once you get deep here , and you can ... the cloud sponges just get thicker, and bigger ... they are everywhere , and its nice to be at a site like this to see them , rather than having to do it from a boat ..
I found the sponge I was Looking for its a Big Beast .... Id say its over 7 feet In diameter and It has Huge funnels ....
Yellow eye and Jess In front of THE BEAST !!!
Jess gave me the underwater signal Of " this is Friggin Rad " and YellowEye was Happy too... The rest of the dive we saw lots Of Nudis.. i saw a Blood star , lots of Little sculpins... Rock fish .... I found a huge cluster Of snail eggs , in the shallows there were lots of urchins up near the top of the Knuckle ....
After the dive was over we had to walk back up and out of the cut , which is a bit of a physical Leg and back challenge I had to stop 2x , and rest cause dive gear is heavy ... when we got to the top back to the picnic tables , and Gear removed ... Scuba Jess was gonna call it DONE .... I was like what ??? you done ?? we came all this way up here to dive this park and you got 2 tanks and Now you're going to jump ship ?? .... I then turned into Navy seal sergeant and Pumped Her up to kick butt, get back in the water and let DO THIS PLACE... We never give up on underwater Adventures Here .. But i also had to Fill her up with DELICIOUS COFFEE , that was like starting Up the warp drive engines on the USS starship Enterprise ... She was Recharged and ready to GO !!!!
Dive 2 was in the lower Lot since most of all the divers had left and it opened up parking for us.... During the summer here there is a shack that has food , and drinks for divers which is really nice , this place is geared up as a dive park ... So in the water ... swim out to the end of the rocks and in we go ... we had the rock wall on the right of us for half of the dive , and then i went up a bit and found the white plumose anemone garden.. this site has some familiarity to it , parts of it remind me a lot like sundrock and octo Hole ... But the way it drops off into the Abyss makes it nice for tech diving ... Here we found kelp greenling eggs... a Fan star ?? some type of star that looks like a fern ....
the sandy areas were covered with Tube welling anemones lots and lots of them ...some clear and i found 2 that were Purple .... a baby grunt sculpin that i showed jess .. Large old barnacles like the one you see and Keystone Pilings ... and these Bright yellow button Polyps growing in little garden patches ...
Once again getting out of the water here is tricky due to the rocks in the shoreline are covered in slippy algae and are quite large... i fell twice.. But getting Back to the car once again , was a Huff fest with my heavy gear on..LOL
A great Dive day ... Highly recommend getting up to this site and seeing what it has to offer ... make sure to bring your camera
