This is one of several public beach accesses along Porlier Pass Road. Just past house # 21745, there's a small gravel parking lot (only big enough for one car) and a short trail leading down to a shallow bay. I couldn't find a name for this bay on the marine chart or the maps. When you look straight out from the end of the trail, there are 2 points of land sticking out into the bay. The marine chart shows a steep drop to over 150 feet deep on the far side of these points. This place was one of the dives I did on Feb. 25, 2012. I snorkeled out on the surface (about 140 meters) to the far side of the points. The rocky reef sloped down to a ledge at about 20 feet deep and then the bottom dropped straight down. Parts of this wall were covered with plumose anemones and it looked like a white waterfall. Visibility was 20-30 feet. I was diving close to the Porlier Pass slack and I felt a reasonable current, but I could swim against it without much of a problem. There were lots of feather stars, urchins and cup corals on the wall. I saw a few of those small soft corals that I've come to expect on Galiano Island. There weren't many fish, just a few kelp greenlings and small copper and quillback rockfish. I reached the base of the wall at around 100-110 feet deep. I didn't swim out across the flat sand to see if the wall started up again since my nitrogen quota was limited because of a previous dive. There were quite a few crimson anemones near the bottom of the wall. I swam back up the wall and swam North about 60 feet deep. Eventually the plumose anemones thinned out and the wall seemed much more bare, populated mostly by urchins. I swam back up the wall to where I started the dive. I saw a pair of large and small Puget Sound king crabs on the ledge at the top of the wall. Despite the surface swim, this might be my favourite Galiano Island shore dive so far.
