I came back to the Western Point of Descanso Bay on Sept. 17, 2017 for a better look. I especially wanted to take some pictures along the shallow wall when the visibility was hopefully better. Like before I snorkeled out to the point on the surface. Visibility here was still 15'. I descended at the point and visibility was about 40' below 10-15' deep. By the way, I found out that this whole end of Gabriola Island is a Rockfish Conservation Area so hock and line fishing is illegal.
Northumberland Channel
Rockfish Conservation Area boundaries:
Swimming over the edge of the deeper wall:
My maximum depth today was only about 80'. I didn't bother swimming deeper since, with the decent visibility, I could see down deeper anyway and, like before, there still wasn't much marine life down there. I swam back up towards the shallow wall that drops from the surface to about 30' deep:
There were some man-made objects up here including an urn/vase and what I think was the remains of an old car that was shoved off the cliff.
I swam along the shallow wall (again, it dropped from the surface to about 30' deep).
As I swam back around the point, I saw several strange rockfish (copper, I think) that had a whitish coating on their heads. It looked like a fungus infection or something. If I just saw one rockfish with this condition I wouldn't have thought it was strange, but in this area (around 15' deep) all the rockfish looked like this. They also looked kind of skinny. Many of these pictures are cropped close-ups of these rockfish taken from wide-angle photos.
After diving here twice now, I still think this place doesn't have as much marine life as many other Gabriola Island spots. I don't think I'll dive here again for awhile.
