This time (Sept. 6, 2009), I swam out towards Mistaken Island on the left side of the reef (when facing out from shore). Visibility was about 50 feet. I swam down past the spindly bits of Strait of Georgia bull kelp in the shallows to the urchin-covered rocky reef. Eventually, it turned into a small wall and I recognised the area I was looking for from my "Beachcomber Park" dive. I saw an octopus out in the open and the zoanthid-covered boulder was still perched at the top of the wall. At the end of the reef about 60 feet deep, there was still the crowd of quillback/copper rockfish, lingcod and kelp greenlings. Since the visibility was great I decided to see what was further out in the channel. There were areas scattered with swimming scallops, crimson anemones and thousands of small nudibranchs. There were a few boulders and low reefs. On one of them, I saw a group of 3 tall chimney sponges (80 feet deep). Despite being mostly flat, this area in the channel had lts of interesting invertebrate life. It's too bad I didn't have the air to have a better look around. My maximum depth here was 82 feet. I swam back up to the main reef and instead of swimming back to shore along the "wall" side, I had a look at it's large, flat top. This top of the reef was a smooth, rocky plain with large, rectangular boulders on it. Many of these boulders were covered with zoanthids. I used to think Cottam Point wasn't that great of a dive, but that's just because I was on the wrong side of the reef.
