Category: West Coast


New Site, Feb ’12

Filed Under: New Site 1 by Roko — Leave a comment
February 12, 2012
Coastguard Cutter Wreck

A large propeller, with a Lingcod sitting on it.

A new site was recently discovered by the Shipwreck Exploration and Conservation Society, containing several wrecks which have sunk over the past few years. Some friends had dove it the previous week, and located lots of interesting things. Finally being free and not having to work on a weekend, I joined them this past weekend to explore the sites.

As a quick note to any divers who may be heading out to these wrecks, they have many fragile parts and there are several Lingcod egg masses in the area. Please be careful to not damage these wrecks, or disturb the endangered life in an area slowly recovering from the damage done over the years by the mine run-off. Good buoyancy and and propulsion skills are a must, as these will quickly disintegrate from too many unskilled divers abusing this site.

Coastguard Cutter Wreck

Looking along the bow of the coastguard cutter wreck

Initially we dove a site away from the two main wrecks, and explored some smaller sunken boats and a bunch of “junk”. In the top 30 or so feet near our exit point, there was a rock bed which held a nice amount of life, providing opportunities for some nice macro photography.

It was really interesting diving the two wrecks, however without a wide angle lens, and a camera that doesn’t handle poor light that well, taking photos of the wreck was difficult. I managed to get some good shots after playing around with settings however. Fiddling around with the white balancing of the RAW photos in UFRaw yielded some interesting results, but ultimately I think black and white provided the best results for the wreck photos. I was left wishing I had a wide-angle lens, and a camera with better low light sensitivity…

Shrimp

A neat shrimp, just over 1 inch in length. I must have taken 30 photos with various settings to get it just right...

 

Swimming up and down the two wrecks provided for some interesting macro opportunities as well, as life is taking hold on them. From some larger nudibranchs, various fish, and tonnes of shrimp. These made me wish I had a macro lens! I think I might opt for some macro wet lenses for my case in the next little while…

Once again, I urge the utmost caution with this site. It’s very fragile, and will deteriorate very quickly if we as a dive community do not take care of it.

Below are the rest of the photos:

 

 

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Whytecliff, January ’12

Filed Under: Whytecliff by Roko — Leave a comment
January 21, 2012
Decorator Crab

A decorator crab on a sponge.

After a crazy week of Vancouver snow and freezing rain, I skipped on over to Whytecliff park for a couple of dives. Luckily it had warmed up to above zero, and the snow had been washed away by all the rain. Unfortunately, the rain appeared to have washed the snow straight into the ocean, causing some pretty bad viz (10-20 feet.. Bad for winter, good for summer!) and cold temperatures on the dive.

At Whytecliff itself, there were some swells making entry and surface swimming a lot more fun. The tide was high, so we didn’t have to scramble over too many big rocks to get in. Instead of surface swimming around towards the day marker, we elected to descend early and go through the bay underwater to avoid some of the swell.

Sunstar Arm

If you've ever wondered what the tube-feet on one of a Sunstar's many arms look like, this is it.

Underwater I didn’t feel it was my best photography day, as I didn’t find too many critters posing nicely (though I found quite a few who flat out refused to co-operate). I spent a large portion of the dives fiddling with my buoyancy and trying to stay still in the frigid waters. (The coldest my computer read was 43 F, but it has an averaging algorithm that I think misses some of the more brutal thermoclines).

At some points on the northern part of the bay, you could see where the fresh water runoff was mixing with the salt water. Always a trippy effect that makes it hard to see, as everything turns blurry.

Even though the sun wasn’t out, it was fairly bright at around 20ft, so I attempted to take some shots without the flash in the shallows. It was a bit awkward, as making the shutter speed any less than 1/60s introduced too much motion blur, while pumping the ISO up to 400 introduced too much noise in the camera. Fiddling with the RAW files made things look  more interesting. Unfortunately, the poor vis made it hard to take any decent shots. It did make me wish I had a wide angle lens for this camera, however…..

Below are some of the photos:

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A Winter Day’s Dive at Porteau Cove

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January 15, 2012
Red Dendronotid

a rather large Red Dendronotid

hermitcrab

A Black-eyed Hermit Crab

After scraping the ice and snow off of my Jeep this morning, I made my way down to Porteau Cove with one of my dive buddies. It was a nice day hovering around zero, with a light dusting of ice and snow on the ground. Perfect for drysuit diving in cold water!

I’m pretty sure my computer measured the water at the surface at about 39 degrees F, but thankfully at depth it warmed up to about 44 degrees F. We managed two good dives, about an hour long each. My new Santi hood managed to keep me much warmer than my old hood did, so I didn’t get too chilled. For the second dive I did have to throw on an extra 4 lbs of weight so that I could inflate my drysuit some more…

I managed to get some nice pictures on this dive that I’m happy with. Without further addoo, here are the photos:

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New Case at Furry Creek

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January 8, 2012
Squat Lobster

This guy and several of his cohorts were hiding in a crack in the rocks. I think it's a Squat Lobster (aka "pinch bug")

A very small Anemone. There were plenty of these tiny guys on the wall.

In the fall, Paul introduced me to Furry Creek. Since then, I’ve been back a couple of times, and really enjoy it as a dive site. The wall has a nice amount of life (including a wolf eel!), plus in the shallows are some old bottles to dig through. This time around I found Pepsi-Cola bottle from the early 1950′s.

It was my first trip out with the camera in a while. The first dive I dove with the case empty, but satisfied when there were no leaks I took the camera with me on the second dive. I managed to get a few good photos, however right when I found a giant frosted Nudibranch that I really wanted a photo of, the strobe stopped syncing. I’ll need to adjust the fiber optic sync setup I’ve jury-rigged before my next dive.

Without further adoo, the photos are below.

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Another day on the Annapolis…

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September 11, 2011
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Birds on the lifeboat crane.

… Another day closer to sinking it.

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Seal at Whytecliff

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September 10, 2011

We went for an evening dive after work yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any good photos, but a seal did come visit us underwater for a while!

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Whytecliff, Sept ’11

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September 5, 2011
Scuplin

A Really Cool Sculpin

Andrea, a friend and dive instructor was leaving for New Zealand for a lengthy period of time, and organized a great going away barbeque and dive day at Whytecliff. When we got there, Paul and I rushed to get into the water. The first dive I took my wide angle lens with me, and we dove the islet in the hopes that the seal we’d spotted on the surface would come visit us. He didn’t. That jerk. Unfortunately the Vis wasn’t so great, so I didn’t manage to get a lot of good photos with the wide angle on the first dive. However, we did see a really cool scuplin. On the way back through the bay, I spotted an octopus hiding beneath a concrete block, though he was way too tucked in to manage a good photo. After the dive, on our swim back to shore we saw a mink hop into the water and take a quick swim. Way too cool!

Hermit

Hermit Crab! (And a tiny Nudibranch)

On our second dive, we swam around to the plumose gardens. It was amazing how much life there was in the area. Not only were there tonnes of plumose anenomes as the name implied, but there appeared to be a large population of hermit crabs which I managed to snap a few  great photos of. Part way through the dive, we hear a VERY loud boat overhead, I assumed it was the ferry. Carrying on, plenty of other fish were to be seen. It was an amazing dive, and I pulled some great photos from the camera.

I pulled close to my NDLs on this dive as I was on Air. I thought I’d save $10 and not get my usual EAN32 fill, as I had intended to do some shallower diving with these tanks on a dive day that ended up being cancelled. As a result I had a less than optimal gas for the dive, and had to ascend earlier than I would have liked to avoid going into deco. With plenty of gas left in the tank, but a nitrogen loading preventing me from staying at an interesting depth, I spent 10 or so minutes practicing holding mid-water stops at 20, 15 and 10 feet, using only my computer and the silt in the water as a visual reference.

Octopus (Cake)

An Epic Octopus Cake!


Once we surfaced we noticed that a hovercraft had come into the bay and parked on shore for a good will visit (and for some free BBQ food!). As it ends up that loud ship we’d heard wasn’t a ferry, but the hovercraft coming in. I’ve posted photos in another post.

For Andrea’s barbeque, someone had made an incredible octopus cake, clutching a detailed scuba diver. The attention detail in the cake was so amazing, the eye even looked like an octopus eye! It was a shame to eat it in the end.

A great day with great people. And Andrea, if you’re reading this from NZ, I hope you’re enjoying your trip!

More photos are below. I’ve added notes regarding some specific images below if you view them full-sized.

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Porteau Cove (August ’11)

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August 20, 2011
octo1

Octopus!

I went for a couple of dives at Porteau Cove on a nice hot sunny day. Although getting dressed into a black drysuit in the hot sun, with plenty of thick insulation underneath, was uncomfortable (to say the least), I soon waded into the water with my dive buddies and got to cool off.

Unfortunately my first dive was bad for photography: I’d been messing with my camera’s settings for underwater photos. To make maters worse, my right glove was leaking fast (Special thanks to my ferret Randy, who thought that all he had to do to steal my dry gloves a couple weeks prior was to bite down on them really hard), and I generally felt uncomfortable in the water.

On the second dive, however, everything clicked into place. I was very comfortable in the water, my hands had heated up the water in my now soaked “dry”-glove, and I managed to get some great photos! I was very surprised with the results — Who knew that reading up about f-stops the night before, and experimenting with them until you got the correct one would dramatically improve my underwater photography.

awesome

A bunch of sea-life. How many creatures can you count?

To make things even better, we even found a giant octopus on the second dive, who was gracious enough to let me photograph him/her. (Unlike the cantankerous longfin gunnels I’d been trying to photograph, but would always dart away as I lined up for a good angle on their faces’)

Although I didn’t get a lot of photos good, I’m rather pleased with how the good ones turned out.

Click below to see the rest of the photos!

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Back in the Water! (Tuwanek)

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July 30, 2011
davewillpaul

From the left, Dave, Will and Paul

After a much, much too long hiatus from diving, I jumped on the opportunity to get back in the water, with a trip to Tuwanek with one of the local dive shops. There was a large group of divers, and all in all we had two good dives.

In spite of being a bit rusty after a large diving break, and even more rusty with the camera, I managed to get some good photos. (At least I thought they were good, until I opened up “Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest” to ID a few creatures, and compared my photos to the ones in there….)

The visibility was atrocious in the first 40-50 feet or so, however once below 60 feet or so, it cleared up to amazing (if dark) visibility. The first dive we dove on the left island, in search of Octopuses. I tried my wide angle lens, but mistakenly left the ISO cranked up to at 800, which on the Powershot G10 leads to some very grainy photographs. I managed to get some good shots of my dive buddies (Team Better-Than-Awesome), as well as some sea-life.

wolfeel2

Wolf Eel!

On the second dive, we dove the Right island.  I left the wide angle on shore, and was glad I did as there was plenty of opportunities for a lot of non wide-angle shots. Paul led us to a wolf eel (The first one I’ve seen in the wild!), and later on to an Octopus, however by the time I found the Octo, it was tucked in deep into it’s crevice, so I didn’t try to take any photos of it. By the end of the dive, we had made our way around the second island, which led to a long surface swim back.

A great couple of dives, with a great group of people — An excellent way to spend a Saturday.

Click below for more photos. A great way to browse through them is the “View with Piclens” option. Although it didn’t work on my blog before, an update of the NextGen Gallery plugin I use to manage photos on here has fixed it.

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Annapolis, Again

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July 24, 2011
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An Iconic photo from inside the hangar

Another day on the Annapolis. I spent the day helping haul heavy items (heavy duty fans, steel doors, large electrical motors etc) to a large enough hatch for a crane to lift them out of the ship. Some tough work, but an awesome day! Not too many photos, but I did want to post this one…

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