This is one of the islands off the Sidney area. I haven't taken my boat up here in years. Today (July 1, 2013) it was calm out and I was hoping the plankton blooms would have died off by now. I chose to dive at Sheep Island because it gets a fair amount of current and the chart shows a steep drop to about 150 feet deep on it's South-West side. I tied up in a tiny cove on the South-West side and swam straight out. Another zodiac-type boat was slowly cruising back and forth near shore here. Just before I swam out I saw a diver climb into it, so I wasn't the only one thinking of diving this spot. I was hoping for a steep, rocky drop, but the bottom was just a gentle slope of sand and gravel. Visibility was about 15 feet. When I was 30 feet deep I saw a rocky reef off to my left. It was pretty bare, with just a few urchins on it. I followed it deeper . I saw a fish-eating anemone, which is surprising this far up Haro Strait. There were a few copper and quillback rockfish and kelp greenlings. I was expecting much more colour in this current-swept area, but as I continued to swim along the reef, the invertebrate life increased. At first the rocks were covered with clumps of cemented tube worms. Eventually everything was smothered with those multicoloured colonies of tiny tunicates that you see in high-current areas in the Southern Gulf Islands. The conglomerate rock rock formed a wall here that went down to about 60 feet deep. The reefs and ledges continued down to about 80 feet deep. Below that I could see more boulders and small reefs out on the sand. I was diving at around the Race Passage slack and I could feel enough of a current to make me stay close to shore. I saw a cabezon swimming around the boulders. One thing I found strange about this spot is the lack of plumose anemones on the wall compared to other similar local spots (Graham's Wall/ Rhea Island). I still think it was pretty decent, and I'll have to come back eventually to have a look farther along the wall.
