I came here on Sept. 7, 2007. Rocky Point Park is at the end of Fillinger Crescent (where it turns into Winchelsea Place). There's a big, round parking area and a steep, narrow trail down to the water. Once down on the rocky shore, I could see Neck Point off to the right. There's a life ring on a post near the water and a sign warning you not to go near the edge without a life jacket. I guess this place gets pretty slippery during wet/stormy weather. I slid in to the water and descended down a rubble/boulder slope half-covered with bottom kelp to a sandy bottom at around 50 feet deep. Visibility was around 10-15 feet. There wasn't much of a variety of life down here compared to most other Nanaimo dives. Most of the fish were copper rockfish, but I did see a few juvenile yelloweye, kelp greenlings and quillbacks. There were a few scattered cup corals and some patches of zoanthids, but I didn't see any anemones or feather stars. There were a few small seapens out in the sand. I had swam out to the right and when it came time to swim back, I ascended to the shallows to see what it was like there. It seemed there was a lot more colour up here. There were patches of small plumose anemones and those small, pale, pink-green anemones you see in tide pools. There were also lots of purple seastars and patches of yellow colonial tunicates. Painted greenlings were everywhere. There was even a mini kelp forest with that kind of small, juvenile-looking bull kelp you get in the Strait of Georgia. When I made it back to where I started, I ducked back down to the bottom of the slope to see what it was like a bit to the left. It was slightly deeper here (60 feet). This happened to be just under the thermocline and the visibility improved to around 30 feet. There was a group of 30-40 copper rockfish schooling near the bottom. I saw a tiger rockfish and remembered my tiger rockfish/ wolfeel cohabitation theory. About a second after that thought, I saw a medium-sized male wolf eel swimming out in the open in the murkier layer above me. I tried to catch up for some photos, but he was having none of it so I let him swim off in peace. When I made it back to shore, there was a family of deer on the trail.
