This is a small island in the Southern part of Sansum Narrows. I came here on a SEA Dive charter on Jan. 30, 2022. It was a good slack so we did 2 dives here.
For the first dive, I descended on the North side of the islet. Visibility was only about 10'. I think the proximity to the Cowichan River has a major effect on the visibility here. I tried to Swim West, but the current was almost too strong to swim against. I swam down a steep rock slope that ended about 65' deep. There were mostly giant barnacles here. I briefly saw an area with lots of plumose anemones around the North-West corner of the island before I was swept back East by the current.
When I swam around the corner to the East side of the islet, I was sheltered from the current so I was able to swim around normally. The bottom here was a bit shallower (maybe 50' deep). As I swam along, this area seemed to have more plumose anemones than most of the North side of the islet.
The sandy bottom between Burial Islet and Saltspring Island was covered with tube-dwelling anemones. I've never seen them in such a dense carpet before. I also saw a few sea pens and giant nudibranchs.
For the second dive, we started on the West side of the Islet and swam out down the slope. At first I didn't see any anemones. The rock face was mostly covered with cemented tube worms, rock scallops and giant barnacles. Visibility seemed slightly better than the first dive, maybe up to 15', but it was still fairly dark.
Eventually, after swimming North for a while along the slope, I reached an area with lots of plumose anemones. My maximum depth here was just over 90' deep and I could see the anemones continuing down deeper. Most of these pictures were taken between 60-90' deep.
I swam back the way I came, past the area with no plumose anemones and headed around the South side of the islet. This side of the islet didn't seem to have any plumose anemones either.
I swam around the South-East corner of the islet and started to see lots more plumose anemones, including carpets of the small kind in the shallower depths.
Despite the bad visibility today, I can see that this would be a great spot on a bright day with better visibility. The covering of invertebrates in certain areas around the islet was impressive. I did find the lack of fish to be strange. Other than the variety of tiny sculpins, I only saw one rockfish (brown), 2 small lingcod and about 4 kelp greenlings.
