goodridgeislands

This is a string of a few small islands out in the middle of Sooke Basin. The marine chart shows a steep drop to about 50' deep all around them. I've done a few dives at various spots along the shoreline of Sooke Basin and I thought I'd satisfy my curiosity about what it was like out farther from shore. I came out here in my boat on Oct. 13, 2024.

I launched my boat at the Anderson Cove public boat launch. This "ramp" is fine for kayaks, but I'll never launch using a trailer here again. It's a steep, curving, gravel lane with a ditch on either side. Lining up the trailer to back down the lane involves blocking both lanes of traffic. It's a pretty busy road with a blind corner in one direction. Basically, it's a frustrating and semi-dangerous procedure. Also, 4WD is required if you want to make it back up the loose gravel/mud slope. When you finally back down to the water, the gravel ends in deep mud (these photos were taken after the dive when the tide was higher). The water is very shallow and I had to wade out for a bit while dragging the boat through the mud until it was deep enough to float.

I reached the islands and anchored in the shallows near a gap between the 2 main islands. I had tried to find out who or what owns these islands, but I had no luck looking on the various zoning maps (Sooke, East Sooke, CRD). The zoning maps don't show any lot boundaries around the islands and they don't show it as Reserve land. My best guess is that it's Federal or Provincial crown land. I saw a couple references to it online. One said it was sometimes called "Dead Man's Island", which usually means it was a burial island. One kayaking blog said it was sacred to the Sooke band (maybe because it was a burial site) and you shouldn't land on it. The Sooke band's website isn't working so I couldn't find any info on it there. So not knowing the jurisdiction or etiquette, I decided to play it safe and not go on the land, but I geared up while standing in the shallows near the rocks.

I swam down along the Southern side of the biggest island. The first thing I noticed was that there were areas of red plankton bloom. It sometimes looked like there was a wall or ceiling of red, while nearby was relatively clear. Usually when I dive in this "red tide", it is a layer at the surface and when you get beneath it it is clearer, but very dark. Here, the clouds of red seemed to be drifting around randomly at various depths. Outside of the red clouds, visibility was 10-15' with some 20'-visibility areas.

The rock slope dropped down pretty steeply to a silty bottom about 55' deep. In the 30' depths there were groups of orange plumose anemones, but below that, the rocks were pretty bare. There were lots of California cucumbers and patches of some kind of encrusting yellow sponge (or tunicate?). There were some areas with lightbulb tunicates that seemed to be on their way out (they die off seasonally in the Fall). I hardly saw any fish. There were a few baby yellowtail rockfish and some small (a few inches long) quillback and copper rockfish in one area. There were lots of shrimp. I don't know if it was a mating aggregation or if they are always there.

I'll always find it interesting to dive somewhere new, but I don't think I'll bother coming here again. If this was a shore dive, I'd come back to explore more around the different islets, but the hassle of taking a boat here isn't worth it in my opinion. I think the few shore-accessible spots around Sooke Basin have more life than these islands. As you can see by the photos, there are lots of small creatures like nudibranchs, crabs, shrimp, etc. if you look up close, but you can say that about pretty much any dive site.