I haven't been diving the wreck of the Lord Jim in a few years. I was in the area and decided to see how the wreck was getting on. When I arrived I noticed that the marker buoy was missing. I ended up swimming out to a depth of 25-30' and heading towards Mill Bay. Visibility was at least 30', which is by far the best I've seen here. I swam for longer than expected. I saw a school of perch and figured the wreck must be nearby. I saw it in the background. With the good visibility I could see almost the whole wreck at once. The entire superstructure had collapsed. The bow was half rotted away. The stern was still mostly intact. I could see the engine through big holes in the deck and hull. There were a huge amount of fish swarming around the wreck. Most of them were copper rockfish and I also saw brown rockfish, copper rockfish, perch, schools of herring, kelp greenlings and a buffalo sculpin. The sunken marker buoy sat on the bottom off the port side of the bow. Nearby there was another buoy with big holes corroded through it. On the swim back, a bit shallower, the bottom kelp was covered with hooded nudibranchs. These are the smaller type I've seen before in Saanich Inlet in the late Summer. The Strait of Juan de Fuca ones are larger and show up in the winter. The pictures on this page are "screen grabs" from the video I took.
