I haven't been diving here in about 8 years. The steep hike back up from the shore prevented me from wanting to dive here regularly. I recently noticed on a marine chart that there seemed to be a steep, probably rocky area sticking up from the bottom a bit offshore. It seemed to go from 8' deep down to about 30' deep. I wanted to try diving it so I did on Sept. 15, 2019. My plan was to snorkel out to a rocky point, descend there and then follow my compass out to the promised reef.
First I visited the small patch of macrocystis kelp just off the pebble beach. When I first dove here about 8 1/2 years ago, this patch of "giant" kelp was the first I had ever seen. Today, it had that dull, fuzzy look that it gets in late Summer (in Spring and Early Summer it looks fresh and golden).
I continued snorkeling to a rocky point out to the right from the beach. The kelp here was the more common bull kelp. There were lots of hooded nudibranchs on the kelp fronds. Visibility was worse than expected for the time of year. It was only about 10-15' and there seemed to be lots of sediment floating around. I don't know if it was being stirred up by the surge or if it was plankton.
I descended at the point (25' deep) and followed my compass out over the sand and eelgrass bottom.
This whole area was about 30' deep. I saw a few small rocky reefs topped with stalked kelp, but nothing large enough to be what was shown on the chart. Eventually, I reached a larger rocky area. It's top was around 20' deep and it dropped to about 30-35' deep on all sides. This reef was large enough to be the area shown on the chart. There was a school of small black and yellowtail rockfish on top and lots of urchins and fish-eating anemones on its sides.
I swam all the way around the reef and felt like I had a good look at the area so I followed my compass back to shore. I spent the second half of the dive poking around the rocky slope (its base was around 25-30' deep) as I slowly made my way back to the entry-point beach.
I still think this is a decent, shallow Juan de Fuca dive. The major drawback is the steep trail back up to the road. It will probably prevent me from diving here again for another 8 years or so.
