The Artificial Reef Society of B.C. stripped and sank a Boeing 737 jet off Chemainus in 2006. I've always avoided diving on it almost out of principle. I risk sounding rude, but it seemed like an overly "Disneylandish" sort of dive to me. I recently was invited on a boat trip up there and my urge to take photos of actual divers (other than myself for once) in an unusual setting convinced me to go. We launched at the Chemainus public boat ramp on Sept. 3, 2012 and tied up to one of the buoys marking the plane. These buoys are only a few hundred meters from the boat ramp. Visibility was pretty terrible as we descended down the line and I was afraid I would bump into the plane. At 50 feet deep it started to clear and I could see the pale nose of the plane appear in the surrounding darkness. I'd guess visibility was about 30 feet, but it was hard to tell because of the low light. The top of the plane was about 60-65' deep. Feather stars and plumose anemones were growing on it's surface. Inside, it was like swimming down a big empty hallway. The seats have been removed and you can look down holes in the floor into the cargo areas. A group of small copper, brown and yellowtail rockfish were in the cockpit. The plane is supported about 10 feet off the bottom on stands. There was a memorial plaque for two WW2 pilots and a carved wooden mask mounted to one of these stands. This mask used to be mounted to the nose of the plane. The bottom here was about 90 feet deep. On the bottom, just off the side of the tail, there was a half-dead cloud sponge and a low, silty reef leading away from the plane. There were more feather stars and plumose anemones here. The maximum depth we reached was 100 feet. We went back to the plane and swam around and through it a few more times before heading up. We were going to do a second dive somewhere else, but the choppy water would have made for a slow boat ride so we did another dive on the plane. This time my camera's dome port fogged up (I had opened it on the surface)so I didn't get many decent photos. At the end of the dive we followed another rocky reef off the nose of the plane that went from 60' to about 35' deep. The rock was almost completely bare. I didn't notice any anemones or feather stars on it. My camera and I had an interesting time on these dives, but after swimming around the plane a few times, I felt like I've seen what there is to see.
tied to the buoy
the nose
going in
door
entering the cockpit
in the passenger compartment
inside
Canadian Airlines logo
the wing
near the tail
the tail fin
tail
suddenly, a plane swooped past and almost hit a diver
looking down the cabin
the cockpit up ahead
looking into the cockpit
in the cockpit
the nose
the front end
jellyfish over the plane
over the middle of the plane
the tail
the tail
the tail
the tail
near the tail
the wing
the wing
wing
looking down on the plane
the stand under the plane
the stand
under the plane
reading the plaque
the mask
the mask
rocking horse on the bottom
rocking horse on the bottom
under the plane
long exposure under the plane
under the plane
on the bottom near the plane
nose
nose
under the plane
the cloud sponge
cloud sponge
the deeper rocky reef
fogged-up photo from second dive
fogged-up photo from second dive
the shallower reef
the shallower reef
tiny feather stars
tiny California cucumber
nudibranch on the wing
anemones
no strobe, black and white
no strobe, black and white
no strobe, black and white
no strobe, black and white
the mooring line
at the surface
the boat ramp
the orange buoy in the background on the right marks the plane