Nanaimo Scuba

I went for my first cold water dive yesterday! I've been a member of the UBC Aqua Society since last October, but I was too fearful of the cold water during the winter to even try it. The idea of diving in rainy winter weather had no appeal to me whatsoever. I heard tales of people riding the boat to the divesite in their Goretex jackets with hoods and gloves, freezing with the wind and hoping to jump in the cold water as soon as possible. To me, diving has always been about flipflops, sunblock and my swimming trunks. Thus, the sunny weather of this past week just made it irresistible to go for a dive.
The dive site was the bay of Nanaimo, in Vancouver Island. We took the ferry and planned the dive while enjoying the beautiful views of the mountains. I reviewed signals with my scuba buddy Grant (the "international" scuba signs needed some translation) and learned that Jacques Cousteau loved to dive in this area.

Our first dive was a tugboat shipwreck at a maximum depth of 25 meters. As I soon learned, diving in the summer is terrible in terms of visibility. The warm weather causes algae and plankton to grow, so once you begin descending, the water looks yellow and green and you can't see further than five meters. (Dang! I guess I'll have to learn to dive with a drysuit in the winter.)

The wreck was interesting but not spectacular. You had to be literally on the boat to see it...and to me, the best part of a wreck is to see it lying on the seabed from a distance, and then slowly approach it. Once on the boat, we explored the inside of the main control room and peeked into the hull windows. We were told a large octopus lives in the boat, but we didn't find it.

(I got a little nostalgic of diving in the Caribbean... you either wear a short sleeved 3mm wetsuit, or you go with just your swimsuit... here, I had to use a 14 mm wetsuit with gloves, hood, thick boots, etc.)

The second dive was at a wall that is next to the Saskatchewan shipwreck. Again, the visibility was terrible but it was beautiful to see enormous white anemones and giant starfish. I was surprised that the starfish here have more than 5 arms! There were also hundreds of minuscule starlike creatures crawling on the bottom and many sea cucumbers feeding on the rocks.

(click on the pics to enlarge)