I noticed this beached wreck on the chart and on the Google Earth satellite imaging program. It's just South of the Arbutus Ridge development on the West side of Saanich Inlet. On the satellite image it looks like a decent-sized wreck. Jamie Smith, who lives on the Malahat and often dives in this area, told me that it's the wreck of a barge. He had been diving there before and was going out again so he invited me along. We launched his boat at the Mill Bay public launch on July 18, 2007. We followed the shore North until we arrived at the wreck. The tide was low and I could see that the wreck was a half-exposed, upside-down steel barge. Right next to it was the remains of an old loading conveyor and a steel-frame tower with rusting machinery on it. We anchored the boat in the shallows between the wreck and the shore. The bottom was sandy (not silt, but actual sand) and only a couple of feet deep. We swam out to the side of the barge facing away from shore and followed it along where the metal met the sand (around 15 feet deep). Visibility was around 15 feet as well, not bad for surface water in this area. The previous time Jamie dove here, the tide was much higher and this area was, of course, deeper. The steel "wall" was full of rusty holes along it's length, allowing us to look and swim inside. There were groups of small plumose anemones, sea stars, gunnels and crabs on the wreck. There were the expected schools of perch, but I was surprised to also see swarms of juvenile rockfish (black, brown, copper, yellowtail). There were also a few adults here and there. I found this unusual for such a shallow dive. About halfway down the wreck, a small dogfish shark charged in, scattering the rockfish. As soon as it saw my camera, it took off before I could react for a picture. This barge is a great dive for photographers with it's fish-filled corridors and light shining down through the holes. Eventually we reached the conveyor area . It continued down for awhile (again, about 15 feet deep at low tide). There were more small plumose anemones, rockfish and perch here. We swam back along and inside the barge until we reached the end again. I tried swimming down the slope to see what was there, but it was just sand and scraps of metal here and there. I gave up at 20 feet deep. In the shallows next to the wreck, there was a bed of eelgrass with schools of shiner perch, dungeness and red rock crabs, snake pricklebacks and white-spotted greenlings. I'm not sure how the wreck got here or how long it's been around. It almost looks like it was deliberately put there upside-down as a dock for whatever industrial operation was there. Of course it could have been there to be loaded by the conveyor and maybe it was unstable and it capsized before drifting in upside-down. I don't know how easy it is for a barge to capsize. I measured it on Google Earth and it's almost 300 feet long. After the dive, it was fun trying to take surface photos in the rain with a fogged-up lens while standing waist deep in the water. It's a good thing I didn't remember that my camera's worth more than my car, although that's not saying much.
