I've only been here once before, about 13 years ago. I came back on a SEA Dive charter on Sept. 5, 2022.
We entered the water just South of the main island along a string of smaller rocky islets. This area was a not-very-steep slope of sand and small rocks with some larger rocky areas scattered around. There wasn't that much marine life here compared to many Sidney-area dives. There were mostly orange burrowing cucumbers, California cucumbers and some red urchins. I went down to about 60' deep here. Visibility wasn't great, maybe 10-15'.
I drifted with the current North along the slope. The slope became steeper and rockier. From my previous dive here, I remembered that this area of the main island had a wall of plumose anemones covering a large area from 30' deep down to over 90' deep. This time as I swam along the slope, I kept expecting to come across the plumose anemone area, but they seemed to be gone. The dive seemed really different from what I remembered from years ago. There were still a decent amount of current-loving invertebrates like gnarled sponge, cemented tube worms, giant barnacles and lots of branching and lacy bryozoans.
I started to see a few lonely plumose anemones, but still nothing like what I remembered.
I finally came across an area of the wall that had more white plumose anemones. It started about 70' deep and went down to over 90' deep. This might be the remnants of the much bigger group of plumose anemones that I saw years ago. I would have liked to stay in this area for longer since it was by far the best part of the dive, but the current here was too strong to stay in place. I tried to snap a few pictures as I was swept along.
The current quickly blasted me past the plumose anemone area. Around the North end of the island, there seemed to be less "current-y" invertebrates. Many of the rocks were covered with tiny white barnacles. I swam up into the shallows around the North tip of the island.
I think this is a decent dive as long as you stay around the area with all the plumose anemones. The rest of the slope along this side of Reay island is pretty average in my opinion. I'm still kind of shocked how most of the plumose anemones from years ago seem to be gone. After the dive, we saw a group of about 3 orcas.
