This is a tiny, unnamed islet about 1/2 kilometer off the Northern tip of Mandarte Island. The marine chart and sidescan image show a possible wall droping to somewhere between 60 and 100 feet deep along its Southern side. I came out here on June 26, 2023 for an evening exploratory dive on the Inde charter boat.
We descended near the middle of the South side of the islet and swam North-West. Visibility was only 10-15'. The rock dropped down in a steep wall.
There wasn't much obvious marine life on this part of the wall except for some red urchins.
The base of the wall was about 80' deep.
The farther I swam, the more current-type invertebrate life there seemed to be. There were lots of cup corals, various hydroids, clusters of giant barnacles, cemented tube worms, a variety of tunicates, orange and red burrowing cucumbers, etc... There were a decent amount of copper and quillback rockfish. Some of the copper rockfish seemed to be almost adult-size, which is rare to see. I saw a few octopus dens and some of the other divers saw some juvenile wolf eels.
I finished off the dive in the bull kelp bed off the North-West tip of the islet.
From what I could see in the murky visibility, I was semi-impressed by the variety of invertebrate life on this dive. I especially liked the 40-50' depths around the North-West end of the islet, where there seemed to be the greatest variety and concentration of current-loving life. I don't think it's a top local dive like North Cod Reef, but I was impressed enough to want to come back and explore some more.
