I've already tried diving the "point" of Otter Point and the East side of it. Today (Sept. 27, 2015) I tried the West side of the point. There's a public right-of-way trail to the water from West Coast Road between houses #8589 and 8601. It's a very short trail that ends on a long pebble beach in Orveas Bay. At the end of the trail on the beach when you're facing the water there's a steep, rocky headland on your left about 100 meters away. The chart shows a slope at this small point that drops pretty steeply to about 40' deep. I was hoping that this slope might have some exposed solid rock reefs. So far, the Otter Point areas where I've been diving have been mostly a slope of sand and pebbles. I chose a calm day for this dive (according to the wind forecasts) since this beach is exposed and it would be difficult to get in the water if there was a swell.
The rocks on shore ended just below the surface and then there was an area of pebbles and sand stretching out into the Strait.
Between 15-30' deep there was a covering of stalked kelp growing on small rocks. Visibility was around 30'. A few Steller's sealions swept in and swirled around me. They usually do a turn around me and then continue on to wherever they were going, but this time they stayed for around 10 minutes. They kept insisting that I take more photos of them and they begged that I would put as many of the pictures as possible on the internet. I felt kind of bad for them so I promised I would.
When the sealions finally left I looked under the kelp to see what else was growing on the rocks. They looked mostly grey and silty, but there were a few fish-eating anemones, urchins and yellow staghorn bryozoans.
Below 40-50' deep, I was surprised to see a fuzzy carpet of feather duster worms and smaller yellow/red tube worms covering the bottom as far as I could see in places. So far I've never seen anything like it. It was difficult to take photos of them since they would all retract at once as I swam within a few feet. There were also moonsnails, crimson and sand anemones and tiny baby sea pens.
The fields of tubeworms ended at around 60-70' deep and then there was a slope of sand with a few crimson anemones. My maximum depth was 80', but the bottom continued to slope down deeper. As I was swimming along, the current suddenly started flowing strongly. I hadn't bothered to time this dive with any current table and for the first part of the dive I didn't feel any. I later checked and found that I started the dive on the Race Passage table's slack. The current was now flooding and it was getting almost too strong to swim against. A small rock with a clump of fish-eating anemones gave a hint of what this site would be like with more rocky structure. I tried to take a few self-portraits with the anemones, just to have a diver in the picture, but the current kept blowing over the tripod, stirring up the bottom as I tried to hold the camera in position as the timer counted down. I struggled back up the slope past the fields of tube worms. There was an area with small boulders and a couple of plumose anemones. I saw an octopus den, a sailfin sculpin and a tiny ruby octopus out in the open. I survived the current and made it back up to shore. I'm definitely planning on coming back for the tubeworm meadows and the potential for a colourful rocky reef somewhere out there.
