This is the next point over from Madrona Point in the Nanoose/Parksville area. You enter the beach by going down some steps at the end of Seadog Road. There is a steep-sided reef going out towards Mistaken Island. As at Madrona Point, I was surprised by the lack of invertebrate life on the bare rocks. Purple sea urchins clustered here and there and there were a few cup corals on some of the rocks. The visibility was really bad here too (again, end of July). You could see a manageable 10 feet above the thermocline (20 feet deep), but below that visibility was about 3-6 feet. I'm used to the water clearing up below the thermocline. The clouds of tiny shrimp were out in force again and I gave up at about 40 feet because I kept almost swimming into rocks. I don't know how deep the reef goes or what the life is like down there. It would be interesting to find out on a day with better visibility. I spent the rest of the dive above the thermocline 20 feet deep or so. On my way up I saw an outboard motor lying next to the reef. There were 2 orange plumose anemones (the only ones I saw) living on it. Maybe they preferred the smooth surface to the rough sandstone reef. On the reef itself, there were lots of copper rockfish and kelp greenlings. There were lots of cracks and hollows for creatures to hide, but I didn't see any octopus. Maybe I wasn't deep enough. There was some current flowing over the top of the reef, but it wasn't that strong and I could "hide" from it on the other side of the reef. Like Madrona Point, this would be a good site to explore for local divers when the visibility is better, but not worth the drive from Victoria in my opinion.
I gave this place another chance in mid-Aug. 2005, but I still think it's a waste of gas for Victoria divers. Visibility was around 20 feet. There was still lots of bare rock and urchins. There were some orange colonial tunicates in a few areas, but not a lot of invertebrates considering the current. I followed the reef down for around 20 minutes, and it seemed to peter out at 65 feet or so.
