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CCGH Siyay

Filed Under: Random by Roko — 1 Comment
September 5, 2011
Siyay

This is what we found when we surfaced...

The Coast Guard Hovercraft Siyay came to visit Whytecliff while we were diving. They said it was for a sort of public outreach, but I secretly believe they just came for some burgers at Andrea’s going away barbeque. We heard it coming in when we were underwater, but just dismissed it as a really loud boat. Upon surfacing, we noticed it parked there!

Touring around inside the hovercraft was really cool. It’s a somewhat dedicated dive vessel, with the first room containing drysuits ready to go, the second room had dive gear set up for demonstration, and the room after that containing tanks of breathing gas for surface supplied diving.

In case you recognize the name, the Siyay was the vessel which transported the porpoise Siyay to the Vancouver Aquarium’s Marine Mammal Rescue center to try to save it’s life. The porpoise was named after this hovercraft.

More photos of the hovercraft below!

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Porteau Cove (August ’11)

Filed Under: Porteau Cove by Roko — Comments Off on Porteau Cove (August ’11)
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.

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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)

Filed Under: Tuwanek by Roko — Comments Off on Back in the Water! (Tuwanek)
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.

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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

Filed Under: Annapolis by Roko — Comments Off on Annapolis, Again
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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Volunteer Day on the Annapolis

Filed Under: Annapolis by Roko — Comments Off on Volunteer Day on the Annapolis
May 29, 2011
Approaching the Annapolis

Approaching the Annapolis

For the past three years, the Artificial Reef Society of BC has been working hard at preparing the ex-HMCS Annapolis to be sunk as an artificial reef off of Gambier Island, in Howe Sound. Having enjoyed the reefs off of Nanaimo, I thought I’d volunteer to help out with the Annapolis knowing that I would be diving it in the future. So this past Saturday, I found myself deep down in the bottom of her hull, cleaning up in the engine room. Although everyone working on her for the past few years made an incredible amount of progress, there was still some dirty work to be done!

I highly recommend that any diver who doesn’t mind getting a little dirty help out with the Annapolis. It’s really interesting to see the ship before it sinks, and it’ll be really interesting to see how it progresses over the years after it’s sunk and life begins to take hold in and around the vessel. The dedicated folks who have been working hard on her for the past few years were welcoming of a newbie like me, and I’m definitely going to try and make it back out to put in some more days helping out.

Roko in the hole...

Me helping clean the engine room. The flash doesn't do it justice, because it was dark!

Plenty of photos below. In a few of them, you can see just what kind of mess needs to be cleaned up before she sinks. Lots of oil things that need to be removed so that it doesn’t pollute the ocean when she goes down.

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Blue “Lobster”

Filed Under: Random by Roko — 1 Comment
January 14, 2011
Lenny the Lobster

Lenny the "Lobster"

I haven’t been diving in a while. It sucks. Holidays got in the way, and then I decided to get my neck-seal repaired. That’s done, and I just have to get it picked up and my tanks filled. Hopefully I’ll get some diving in soon!

In the meanwhile, we’ve started up a small aquarium (Stefania’s Christmas present) with a few fish, and in the past couple of days.. A Blue “Lobster” (Actually it’s a Crayfish, as it’s a freshwater creature, but lobster sounds much cooler). It’s interesting seeing him (her?) scurrying around the tank, digging between rocks for any food it can scavenge. It’s tank-mates are three Amber Tetras which have so far been quick and smart enough to avoid the lobster’s claws, hopefully their peaceful relationship lasts.

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Plastic in the Ocean….

Filed Under: Conservation by Roko — Comments Off on Plastic in the Ocean….
January 9, 2011

You may or may not have heard of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, basically a concentration of garbage in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thought to be at least as big at the state of California. Here’s a very interesting article at Stefania.ca on the subject.

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Sharks Killed in Playa Del Carmen

Filed Under: Conservation by Roko — 3 Comments
November 14, 2010
Shark by Steffy Chwedoruk

Bullshark in Playa Del Carmen, Photo by Steffy, 2008

In 2008 we took a trip to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. One of the most amazing experiences we had was going on a shark dive, where we dropped into 70 feet of clear tropical water, and drifted in the current as a few large bullsharks swam around us. Amazing animals. We later remarked how much bigger they were than we’d imagined, and how awesome of an experience it was to swim with sharks on a non-baited dive.

Today I found out that a fisherman from a nearby town, knowing full well the significance of those bullsharks to the tourist industry and local economy of Playa Del Carmen, decided his making a quick buck was more important, and killed 9 of the bullsharks.

Absolutely ridiculous. Estimates are pretty high for what the impact to the local economy will be, as shark dives were one of the big reasons for tourists to head down there and spend money — The worst part is, the sharks were likely killed for their fins, which provide no nutritional value, and in fact are full of contaminants which accumulate in animals high up in the food chain.

More information in this article:

http://oceanicdefense.blogspot.com/2010/11/economic-hit-in-mexican-town-communitys.html

More information on Shark Conservation:

http://savingsharks.com/

Some shark facts form the above link:

* Sharks have been around for more than 400 million years
* There are 375 shark species
* Sharks are intelligent and can be trained
* 100 million sharks are killed each year for their fins
* The largest shark is the Whale shark, averaging 9 metres (30 feet) in length—the size of a large bus
* Whale sharks are not aggressive. They eat zooplankton, small fish and squid.
* When a shark loses a tooth, a new one grows in its place
* Mako and Blue sharks are the fastest swimming sharks
* Sharks can take hours or even days to die after being finned
* Sharks are a critical part of marine ecosystems

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Another Whytecliff Night Dive (November ’10)

Filed Under: West Coast, Whytecliff by Roko — Comments Off on Another Whytecliff Night Dive (November ’10)
November 14, 2010
octo1

Octopus!

To end off our weekend, we decided to go for a night dive at Whytecliff. As winter gets closer, days are getting shorter and shorter. Splashing in just after 5pm is a night dive now.

The first thing I noticed was shrimp everywhere! Whichever direction I pointed my 10 watt HID dive light, beady shrimp eyes glowed back out of the darkness. Large shrimp, too. Some would run away, but some where interested in investigating my hand when I put it near them.

We found the Octopus which we’d spotted on an earlier dive (My first Octo in the wild), and I managed to get a photo of it this time… Sort of. Since he was well hidden, I only got a photo of part of a tentacle.

Note: Whytecliff Park is a Marine Protected area. Fishing is illegal there, and with the high traffic of divers in the area, you will get caught. (On this blog, you won’t hear me mentioning locations of Octo outside of protected areas)

For more photos, click below. I know I took a lot of shrimp, but I didn’t really get any other good shots!

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Whytecliff Again (Nov 3)

Filed Under: West Coast, Whytecliff by Roko — Comments Off on Whytecliff Again (Nov 3)
November 3, 2010
Nudibranch

Nudibranchs and something else?

Not too many good photos from this dive. The sun was shining, however and we enjoyed sitting on the rocks looking out onto the bay after our dive.

As luck would have it, we even encountered some divers we knew from Edmonton!

A few more pictures below….

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