The currents in Race Passage were ideal all morning, the weather report showed nothing but sun and the winds were low so I had to go out to Race Rocks again. I went on another Ogden Point charter on Apr. 4, 2009. In the morning, despite the weather report still saying it was completely sunny, looking up in the sky told me that it was cloudy. There was even a layer of ice on the boat, but at least the current tables wouldn't lie to us. Our first dive was at West Race Rock. Since last time I brought a wide-angle lens, this time I put on a close-up lens. Visibility was a bit less than it was a couple of weekends ago, but it was still decent (20-30 feet). It's hard to find stuff to take photos of here. -Not because there isn't much to see, but because there's almost too much. Looking up close, every square foot of wall is covered with masses of anemones, hydrocorals, soft corals, sponges, tunicates, hydroids, etc... I didn't have any camera strobe problems this time, but half way through the dive, my lens stopped auto-focusing. I guess all the colour was too much for the circuits. This wall must throw out some kind of cursed magnetic field whenever there's a camera nearby. So like last time, I swam around camera-less, being teased by all the marine life ( a pile of nudibranchs on a sponge, a juvenile Puget sound king crab, brittle stars pouring out of hydrocoral....). Back on the boat, the lens worked fine of course, but I changed it out anyway for a wide-angle before the second dive. We went over to a small rock on the outside of Great Race Rock where there was a group of Steller's sea lions hauled out. The idea was to follow a rocky reef that pointed out towards Rosedale Reef. Visibility was a bit less here (15-20 feet) and I was a bit disappointed by the marine life. The reef met a flat sandy area at around 40-50 feet deep. The rocks had none of the stuff that I've come to expect at Race Rocks. There were hardly any anemones and no sponges, hydrocoral, soft coral, etc. Mostly there were urchins and stalked kelp with a few kelp greenlings. Eventually, the amount of life seemed to increase. Brooding anemones and hydrocoral started to appear. Then I was surrounded by a huge school of large black rockfish. They seemed to be curious and would slowly swim towards me. When I moved my head to look at them and they would dart away. I saw a harbour seal do a quick swim-past off in the distance. I saw a rock face covered with plumose anemones, then another strange patch of red on a small wall. I assumed it was incrusting sponge, but up close, I saw it was a colony of strawberry anemones. This is the first time I've seen them in the Victoria area. I swam a bit farther and there seemed to be carpets of them around the boulders. I almost felt like I was at Quadra Island. Things were starting to get good, but my air was low so I went up, past the top of the reef with the stalked kelp rippling in the current.
