I've only been diving at Roger's Reef once before about 10 years ago. At the time, the visibility was pretty bad because of a Spring plankton bloom. I wanted to dive here again when the visibility was better and I finally went for it on Dec. 9, 2018. Since this site is just outside Gabriola Pass, there can be very strong current. I timed this dive for the slack before a 2-knot flood (according to the Gabriola Pass current table).
It was a windy day and there were whitecaps and breakers blowing in towards the shore. These photos were taken after the dive when the wind had died down quite a bit. The surface-swim out to Roger's Reef took longer than usual with the breakers rolling over my head.
I eventually descended near the reef. A wall ran South from the base of the reef. The wall dropped to 45-50' deep at first and as I swam along it, it gradually deepened. My maximum depth was 80', but the wall continued deeper to at least 90' deep. The rocks were covered with clumps of cemented tube worms and cup corals. There were some copper, quillback and tiger rockfish (this is part of the Gabriola Pass Rockfish Conservation Area so fishing is illegal). I also saw schools of perch and a few kelp greenlings and small lingcod. I was surprised that there weren't many anemones. It was a bit dark from the overcast day, but visibility was about 30'.
Eventually I headed back up to the shallows below the Roger's Reef marker light:
Instead of swimming back to shore on the surface, I decided to follow my compass back underwater. The 40'-or-so bottom was a clean-swept area of pebbles and urchins.
I saw a rocky reef extending down from the point on shore. This bottomed out at around 35-40' deep at high tide. I would have liked to spend a bit of time on this reef, but the current had picked up too much to struggle against it so I surfaced and got out of the water.
