Haida Point is locally known as "B.C. Tel Point", but the marine chart calls it "Haida Point" so that's what I'll call it. This was the first dive I did during my visit to Haida Gwaii (April 17, 2012). It's the point on the West side of the bay (Skidegate Landing) where the ferry from Prince Rupert comes in. The chart shows a shallow reef popping up just offshore that drops off on the far side to over 100 feet deep. On a calm day, you can see a patch of Macrocystis(!) kelp marking it on the surface. Just before the point (when driving from Queen Charlotte City), I parked on the shoulder of the road and carefully made my way down a slippery rock outcropping to the water. My plan was to swim out on the surface to the reef, but I wasn't making much headway against the wind and waves so I descended to follow my compass out underwater. Since this was my first dive up here I had no idea what to expect. The rocks in the intertidal zone were covered with rockweed, like in the Nanaimo area or Saanich Inlet, but this area has a 25-foot-plus tidal range so maybe that's the only thing that can survive being exposed so frequently. Deeper down, in the subtidal zone, there could be anything. Visibility was about 20 feet and as I was sinking I was surrounded by 5 Steller's sealions. They didn't touch me, but swam boisterous circles around me, occasionally popping up for a breath. The bottom 20 feet deep was a slope of deep, almost fluffy silt. I followed it towards the point and out towards the reef. The whole time, the sea lions were hanging around. I saw a field of small sea pens beginning at 30 feet deep. There were also lots of bottles. A few isolated rocks were covered with what I think are brown cup corals. They were larger than the orange ones I'm used to seeing and some of them had neon green colouring in them (maybe from some kind of photosynthetic symbiotic algae?). The rocks of the reef appeared and rose to 25-30 feet below the surface (during an 18.7-foot high tide). This rocky reef was completely covered with those brown cup corals. Between 30-40 feet deep, there were stalks of Macrocystis giant kelp rising to the surface. In the Strait of Juan de Fuca, we sometimes see Macrocystis Integrifolia, a smaller, intertidal version of California's giant kelp forests (Macrocystis Pyrifera). I have a feeling that this kelp I saw here may be Pyrifera. It was growing deeper than Integrifolia is supposed to grow and it had cone-shaped (as opposed to flatter) holdfasts (supposedly a trait of Pyrifera). I followed the stair-stepping reef down to about 80 feet, although if I swam out down the silty slope, more rocks might have continued deeper. At all depths, the rocks were covered with brown cup corals. Even a tire was smothered with them. There were also some burrowing cucumbers and California cucumbers. I saw a patch of strange-looking plumose-type anemones at about 70 feet deep. Looking up close I didn't see any of the usual tiny stuff (shrimp, sculpins, hermit crabs, etc.), but I saw several nudibranchs of a species I've never seen before. On the entire dive, I didn't see any fish except for a small, lonely-looking black rockfish. Later, while looking at my photos, I also noticed a painted greenling trying to blend in with the cup corals. I didn't feel any current during the dive (I was diving at high tide according to the Queen Charlotte Tide Table), but as I ascended up the kelp to the surface, I could see that it was stretched out in a surface current (maybe from the wind).
