I wanted to see what the Northern end of Pender Island was like underwater so I picked this spot on a chart because it seemed to drop down quickly and had shore access. The entry point is near the end of MacKinnon Road just north of the Otter Bay ferry terminal. You go down some steps to the beach. I walked out to the left as far as I could go and entered the water. There is an Island close to shore that is connected to the beach at low tide. The dive is on the far side of this island. There are signs on the island warning  that it is private property, so I  swam around instead of walking across it. I checked the current tables for Swanson Channel for lack of a better reference and found that current doesn't often get stronger than 1 knot (20% of Race Passage), so I went in at maximum flood. When I swam around the point of the island, the current was actually ripping like crazy. Way too fast to swim against. While holding on to kelp, I decided to be stupid and quickly drop down, do a drift and see what was down there. I was swept along in the current which suddenly stopped dead at 30 feet deep. I didn't feel the slightest tug at all. There was a slope of boulders with tons of rockfish, a cabezon guarding eggs and two sea stars fighting over a dead octopus. Visibility was only 15-20 feet (end of July). There wasn't a huge amount of colourful invertebrate life on the rocks. Mostly urchins, orange colonial tunicates, a few cup corals, tube worms and staghorn bryozoans. Then my new buddy showed up. A 4-foot lingcod started following me everywhere. He would swim right next to me and plop himself down, blocking my way. I would swim over him and he would do the same thing again.  Maybe some diver feeds him and he was begging for handouts. I went deeper and he abandoned me at 60 feet. I went down to 100 feet and saw almost no fish. There was a sandy slope with huge boulders and small walls covered with grey feather-like hydroids. I saw a feather star and lots of sea pens in the sand. When I returned to the shallows, my friend was there following me around again. He followed me for the rest of the dive until I surfaced and hit the current again above 30 feet. I wouldn't take the ferry from Victoria again just to do this dive - Although it was definitely enjoyable, it wasn't outstanding. Later in the afternoon I saw a pod of 10 killer whales right off the point. They were jumping in the air non-stop and slamming down with a huge splash. It must have been some sort of contest. Of course I was out of film.