I haven't been diving here in several years. I wanted to see how the unique macrocystis kelp forest was doing so I braved the long staircase to the beach on Aug. 1, 2020. Since this is such a shallow site (not much more than 10' deep), I checked the tide table and saw the Sooke tide table was showing a tide height of 6'. This is a bit over average for the area. I've always wanted to dive here when the tide was higher, but high tide has never matched up with my schedule.
As usual, the visibility near the beach was only about 2'. As I swam out to the kelp, it gradually improved. By the time I reached the kelp bed, I could see about 10', which is typical from what I've seen here in the past. I descended down past the glare of the sunlight reflecting off all the particles in the water and into the dark canopy of the kelp. Swimming through these dark "rooms" under the almost-solid golden ceiling with the sunlight piercing down like laser beams is a unique experience in the Victoria area. On the rocky bottom under the kelp there were lots of nudibranchs (alabaster and opalescent) and a variety of colorful tunicates, sponge and coralline algae.
