This spot is on the West side of Finlayson Arm in Saanich Inlet. It's about 1/3 of the way from the "Under the Powerlines" (Christmas Point) site to the site that divers call "Christmas Point". There's a new medieval/fantasy/hobbit-style cabin being built on a small point with a small boulder-covered bay next to it. I tied up my boat in this bay (Feb. 6, 2010) and swam straight out. Visibility was only a few feet on the surface, but below 10 feet deep, visibility cleared to 50-80 feet. The shallows was a bottom kelp-covered slope of small rocks that dropped off starting at 30 feet deep. It's hard for me to accurately judge visibility when it's more than 30 feet or so, but here I could see down the sloping wall for over 50 feet so it was pretty good. I saw some small boot sponges at 70 feet, which is shallower than usual for Saanich Inlet. There were a few swimming anemones and not many fish. I saw a medium-sized cloud sponge below me at 140 feet. There were a few copper and quillback rockfish around it. I saw a tiger rockfish and several tiny cloud sponges on the wall behind it. Maybe one day these will develop into a garden of large sponges. I only managed one picture down here before my camera refused to cooperate. I think that under that much pressure, the housing compresses just a bit more than usual and presses on the camera inside in a way that freezes up the shutter-release. Anyway, I swam back up shallower where my camera started working again. I swam North along the wall and saw a few more scattered copper, quillback and tiger rockfish. The most common fish were small lingcod guarding egg masses. Back in the shallows, there were lots of moon jellies drifting around.
After some camera tinkering, I wanted to try for some more photos of the deep area with the cloud sponge (Feb. 15, 2010). I think I swam too far South, since I didn't see the one I was looking for, but I did see a few more tiny cloud sponges and several boot sponges. A couple of of the boot sponges were missing their outer "fuzzy" grey layer (spicules?). They were white, translucent and soft-looking. I saw 2 seals in the distance, but they swam off as soon as they saw me. There weren't many fish compared to some Inlet dives, but the topography itself was something to look at with the good visibility (like last weekend, it was over 50 feet).
