So I've never really intended to dive again at Moses Point, but I had a talk with local diver/photographer Scott Stevenson and he said that he recently found a deeper reef after a swim out towards Wain Rock. I drove up to Moses Point the next day (Nov. 19, 2010) to try and find it. The bottom is so gently-sloping here that I had to swim out quite a ways to be able to descend. I followed a compass heading towards Wain Rock and after about 800 psi, I reached the reef at about 50 feet deep. It was made of sandstone and stuck up about 10 feet from the sandy bottom. It was also bigger than I expected. There seemed to be sandy channels with other reefs popping up in the distance. Visibility was about 30 feet. The first thing I noticed was the abundance of cup corals. On some parts of the reef, they were spaced out every few inches. There were also clumps of pale, feathery hydroids, zoanthids and a few plumose anemones. A grunt sculpin was peeking out of a giant barnacle shell. There was about a half-knot current running over the reef, which wasn't too worrying, but it made me wonder how strong it can get here. There weren't schools of fish or anything, but I saw several copper, quillback and brown rockfish and kelp greenlings. I also saw several octopus dens. My maximum depth was about 60 feet, but I didn't manage to cover the whole reef. On my swim back, I had to surface in mid-water to confirm that my compass heading was correct.
I had another look 2 days later. This time there was snow on the ground and the visibility seemed a bit better. I could easily see the bottom 30 feet below me as I tried to save some air by surface-swimming out part of the way. When I found the reef this time, I didn't recognise any of it. I assume this time I was on a different part of the reef. I saw all the same species as on the last dive. The current was still running. Back near shore, there were lots of moon snails and their egg cases on the sand.
I did another dive on Nov. 26, 2010 to try and take some close-up photos. I noticed a few Irish lords and a tiny Puget Sound king crab.
