Around 10 years ago I did a dive at Setchell Point. After swimming out to the tip of the wall, we continued to swim out across the flat bottom. At about 90-100' deep we found some small rocky reefs with plumose anemones and lots of large rockfish (copper, if I remember right). Over the years, I've half-heartedly tried to find them again (maybe twice), but I had no luck. Looking at a sidescan image of the area, I can now see some rock areas about 30 meters off the tip of the Setchell Point wall. I assume these are the reefs I saw years ago and now that I had a better idea where they are, I wanted to visit them again. I dove here on Dec. 11, 2016.
I swam out along the wall that runs out from Setchell Point. The base of this wall is around 40-80' deep. Visibility was around 40' except up in the shallows where there was some shimmery fresh water from snow melt. The wall area seemed more empty than I'm used to. Over the years, I usually see several rockfish, including vermilion. Today, I didn't see any. There was just a school of perch.
When I reached the tip of the rocky point, I followed my compass out across the silty bottom. It was a very high tide and the bottom here was about 90' deep. Eventually I saw a school of perch in the distance and a rocky reef behind it. The rock rose about 4-6' off the bottom about 95-100' deep. There was a single orange plumose anemone and a fair amount of rockfish (mostly copper with a few quillback and brown). There wasn't much else out here in the way of marine life except for some brittle stars.
I only swam around the Southern end of this chain of reefs visible on the sidescan image. The depths and distance from shore limited my time here. I don't think this is the area I saw years ago. These reefs are too big. I swam back to the tip of the Setchell Point wall. I decided to quickly swim off for a bit in a different direction to look for any smaller reefs. I soon came across some small rocks that seemed much more like the reefs I remembered from years ago. These were about 90' deep. There was only one closed-up plumose anemone and no fish at all.
