This is the small island in Brentwood Bay. There is a walkway running along the water in front of the big condo/townhouse development. At the end of Delamere Road, there is a short trail going down to the Western end of the walkway. I came here on June 29, 2007. From the walkway there is a short boulder slope to the water. I swam out and to the left towards the channel between the shore and the Islet. The bottom dropped off fairly steeply down to around 30 feet. From there, a muddy bottom continued to slope down towards the marina. Visibility was around 10-15 feet in the shallows and a bit less below 25 feet deep. On my swim out I stayed at around 15-20 feet deep where there were small walls and overhangs covered with lacy bryozoans. There were also lots of orange solitary tunicates and opalescent nudibranchs. Many of the nudibranchs were laying eggs. I wished I'd brought along a macro lens. I seriously saw thousands of these nudibranchs throughout the dive. Moon Jellies were everywhere. Some of them were the biggest I have ever seen. I reached the channel and swam across on the surface past gawking kayakers to the islet. This swim took about 5 minutes. The shallows around the islet were similar to the previous part of the dive with walls and small overhangs going down to around 30 feet or so. I swam around to the far side of the islet to see what it was like deeper down. After the shallow walls, there was a slope of silty sand and rocky reefs. Below around 50 feet, the visibility improved to around 20 feet, but it was suprisingly dark. The rocks were mostly bare and silty. There were a few copper and brown rockfish that darted off in terror as soon as they saw me. I made it down to around 75 feet, before giving up because it was getting too dark to see anything (I didn't have a light). The chart shows this area bottoming out at more than 100 feet. I retreated back to the bright and colourful shallows where there were plenty of brown and copper rockfish that were willing to put up with me and my camera. I couldn't get over how colourful some of these small walls were. You don't expect to see such a covering of invertebrates in the Inlet. Eventually, I swam back across the channel towards my entry point. On the way, I saw a small ruby octopus clinging to a wall. I took a few pictures (of course it blended in and was almost invisible) before it jetted straight towards me. I was quick enough to get a couple of pictures of it swimming under me before it was gone. I think I'll be back. With a close-up type camera I could see myself taking a lot of pictures here real quick.
The visibility was much better this time (around 30 feet). I spent most of my time around the rocky reefs out to the left. The bryozoans that were covering the shallow walls last time seem to have disappeared. The ones that are left are pale-looking (not that bright golden colour) and "spindly" (before, they were a spiral, christmas tree shape). Maybe it's a seasonal thing or maybe they're on their way out. I also didn't see a single opalescent nudibranch. I did see piles of sunflower stars, swarms of small yellow-tail and black rockfish, brown rockfish in the cracks, more of those moon jellies and a large amount of orange plumose anemones on the deeper (30-40 feet) parts of the reefs. I didn't go all the way out to the island, but I swam out for a bit into the channel. The muddy bottom was covered in places with bottles. Back around the reefs, there was the "wreck" of a little dinghy, some kind of boom from a crane (?) and all the usual engine-block anchors.
