I'm a Champion!
I’d been hearing a lot of people talking about diving in the Sechelt/Tuwanek area, so we decided to get up early and hop on the 7:35 ferry to the Sunshine coast for some diving yesterday.
As I was about to put the batteries into my strobe in the morning, I inspected the o-ring and discovered a nice cut in it. Not sure how that happened, but that meant no strobe on this trip!
We arrived see the two islets, and decided to try diving the right one first. A brief surface swim took us to the island, where we dropped down to 20 feet to make our way around the island in search of the wall on the west side. Two things stuck out immediatley:
1) There was tonnes of life!
2) The visibility was atrocious (8 feet?)!
Anemone
We eventually made our way to the other side of the island, where we dropped down. After about 30-40 feet, the visibility cleared up to 20+ feet! We spent most of our time exploring these deeper, colder parts before popping back up to navigate around the island in the warmer and shallower waters.
There was a lot to see, including many Nudibranchs, crabs of different types, potential octopus dens (Couldn’t find the Octopus), and MANY different fish and jellies. I immediately wished I’d had the strobe with me to try and get some better photos. Luckily I did manage a few good shots.
During our surface interval, we decided to check out the left islet next, however those plans changed when we spotted a seal in the water near the right island. On our surface swim out, the seal came over to inspect us before disappearing again. Unfortunately We didn’t see the seal under the water during the dive.
All in all another great dive trip. I believe the book “151 dives” describes Tuwanek as a giant aquarium, and I think that description is fitting. I’d like to go back when the viability in the top 30 feet is better, as there’s so much to see in the shallow, but I also want to spend more time exploring the deeper parts of the wall.
Although I didn’t get many good photos on this trip, I did get a few that I like. Click bellow for more pictures..
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