On the chart, this place looks similar to Henderson Point, and since I don't know of anyone who has been diving here, I thought I would check it out. It's on the Tsartlip Indian Reserve in the Brentwood Bay area of Saanich Inlet. They have a popular boat launching ramp off Tsartlip Drive with plenty of parking. If you look out from the boat ramp there is a short stone-rubble breakwater to the left. I swam out across a small bay past a half-submerged wreck of a wooden cabin-cruiser to the end of the breakwater. I descended and swam more or less straight out and a bit to the left. The rubble breakwater bottomed out at around 15 feet deep and there was a natural reef continuing down to a silt-gravel bottom at 30 feet or so. This natural reef was similar to the shallows at Henderson and Willis point, but with hardly any fish. I only saw a couple of black-eye gobies and a rock greenling guarding eggs. Visibility was around 10 feet here in the shallows (early November). I swam out across the gently-sloping gravel-silt bottom to see if I could find any drop-offs. There were a few tires and small reefs scattered here and there, but mostly it was a monotonous flat plain. I was just about to give up, when I reached the steep rocky area I was looking for at around 70 feet deep. Visibility had improved to around 50 feet. The section of wall I was on had a semi-circular shape with a flat, boulder-covered area in the middle at around 110 feet deep. All the life that I didn't see earlier was crowded into this "bowl". A group of around 30 yellowtail rockfish swam in mid-water and copper and quillback rockfish were everywhere. There were a few swimming anemones on the rocks. I saw a couple of tiger rockfish so I looked around for wolf eels (every time I've seen tiger rockfish, a wolf eel den was nearby). The sides of the cliffs had lots of deep cracks and sure enough, a male wolf eel was poking his head out of one of them. I would have liked to explore this area better and look for more wolf eels and maybe sponges, but my computer said I was already in "decompression", which I was trying to avoid. It was quite a swim to get back to shallow depths ( I didn't want to do a decompression stop in mid-water). I'll be back to explore this area better later on -if I can find it again. *UPDATE* As promised, I came here again (Nov. 19, 2004). The visibility had improved to about 30 feet near the surface and over 50 feet deeper down. I swam out to try and find the "fish bowl" and wolf-eel again. There were lots of big orange plumose anemones 20-40 feet deep that I didn't really notice last time. I swam in the direction that I thought the deep wall was in and eventually I reached one, but not the one I was looking for. I swam along 100 feet deep and noticed very little life on the sloping wall. I didn't even see any fish. This area went down deeper than I could see. I continued to swim to the left and then in the distance I saw a school of fish. It was the place I remembered. I didn't see any sponges in the area. Deeper down was just a slope of sand. I then went to the wolf-eel den from last time and he was still there. The area was still packed with rockfish. I went across the underwater "bay" to the other side about 20-30 feet away. There was a deep crack running along the bottom of the wall and a female wolf-eel was peeking out near a few large nudibranchs. A few feet away, in the same crack, there was a very large octopus. Back in the shallows, about 40 feet deep, I saw two Irish lords, one of them guarding eggs.
There is now a $10 charge for parking/launching. I went to the "underwater bay" area again. I saw a female wolf eel in the den where the male was last time. All the rockfish were still there, except now there is a group of vermilion rockfish as well. Visibility was around 30-40 feet down deep before I started kicking up the silt. In the little bay near the launch ramp, I had a look at the small, beached wooden wreck (or what's left of it).
