Finn Beach is a popular Nanaimo spot for dive classes since it's a calm, protected bay with lots of parking near the water. It's part of Neck Point Park. Usually when I dive at Neck Point park, I sign out a key at the parks office which allows me to drive to the tip of the point which I think is the best dive spot in the park. I've never dove at Finn Beach before. Since it's a shallow, protected spot, I assumed it was pretty uninteresting compared to other Nanaimo-area dive sites. I was in Nanaimo on Aug. 25, 2015 and I wanted to dive a spot I've never been before so I came here to see what it was like. I swam out along the North side of the bay. In the shallows, the bottom was a gently-sloping plain of small, broken rocks. As I continued to swim out the small rocks sloped down to about 20' deep into the bay. This slope gradually deepened as I swam farther out. Most of this slope was covered with bottom kelp and there wasn't much to see except for lots of blackeye gobies and a few small rockfish. Visibility was 10-15' in the shallows and 30' below 30' deep. I swam for quite a while out past the entrance to the bay. Eventually there were some larger rocky reefs at the base of the slope. There still wasn't much marine life. I saw a couple of Irish lords and there were lots of nudibranchs out on the sand (by now the base of the slope was 50-60' deep). I saw one of the largest lion's mane jellies I've ever seen out over the sand. There were a few urchins and an octopus in a crack.
It was enjoyable to be swimming around underwater of course, but this is probably the most uninteresting spot I've been to yet in the Nanaimo area. At least I can say I've been here, but I don't think I'll be back.
