I'm not sure why I came back here. I guess I wanted to give it a second chance. In theory, this spot has potential since it's steep, deep and gets up to 3 knots of current according to the marine chart. These photos are from Feb. 27, 2011. Visibility was a hazy 15-20 feet. As I swam down the slope/walls, it became darker and darker. My maximum depth was 100 feet and I wouldn't have been able to see anything without a light down here. Even with my light, there wasn't much to see. The rock seemed silty and bare except for small, grey hydroids. I saw a few red urchins and some small copper rockfish and kelp greenlings, but I didn't notice any anemones this time. I went a bit shallower (60-75 feet), where there were a few sea pens and clumps of feather stars. There were also cup corals and tube-dwelling anemones. I had read in some of Fred Roger's books about the wreck of the Chehalis, a wooden steam tug that burned and sank in a small bay near Arbutus Point in the 1930's. He mentioned that it used to be an interesting dive. The propeller is now displayed in front of the Maple Bay marina. There are several small bays around Arbutus Point so I swam up to the shallows (20-35) feet deep and swam along the shoreline to see if I could see anything. I wasn't expecting to see much since most of the wood would be gone by now, but the boiler and machinery could still be down here. I didn't see anything that could be wreckage, but maybe I didn't swim far enough.
I learned something interesting online about the small forests of sargassum seaweed that are common here and at other places in B.C./Washington/California. Apparently they were accidentally introduced from Japan in the 1940's and have since settled in. They require relatively warm water to reproduce, which is probably why I usually see them in places that warm up near the surface in the summer (Maple Bay, Saanich Inlet, Nanaimo, Nanoose, etc.).
