I'm not sure why this place is called an "island" since most islands this small are called "islet" or "rock". Anyway, I came here on Dec. 8, 2007. Staines Island is on the East side of Cadboro Bay. The chart shows a bit of a drop on the South side of the island to around 20 feet. I know that's not very deep and normally I wouldn't bother with this place, but it gave me an excuse to look along this shoreline for the wreck of the SS Enterprise (see "Funnel Cove" page). There's a short lane off Sea View Road going down to a bench and some electrical boxes near the shore. You can see Staines Island off to the left. You're not allowed to park in this lane so I parked back up on the main road and walked back to the water. The view from the bench matched up with the photo of the wrecked steamship. I descended down a rocky slope to a flat, sandy bottom at around 15-20 feet deep (high tide). I swam straight out for a bit and then turned left towards the island. Visibility was around 10-15 feet. The sand was covered with a greenish-yellowish-brown mat of diatoms. There were tracks all over the place from dungeness crabs. Sometimes one would pop up from under the sand and scamper off in a cloud of silt. There were also quite a few old and new bottles scattered around (everything from Crown Royal to old broken stoneware bottles and 1950's coke bottles). The locals must have been throwing their garbage from their backyards here for quite a while. I even saw a broken toilet, but I didn't see anything resembling wreckage. There were a few silty, rocky reefs here and there. I didn't see any fish except for a turbot (like a big flounder). Eventually, I reached the island and it's rocky sides sloping down to around 20 feet deep. There were some areas of very gently-sloping rock going down to around 30 feet deep. I didn't see any fish here either. The rocks in the shallows had some patches of white encrusting sponge, yellow sulphur-type sponge and scattered nudibranchs in the red seaweed. The most obvious invertebrates were painted anemones, which were pretty common (like at most places in the Cadboro Bay area). I swam around the island and headed back to my entry point, feeling a bit cold after an hour and a half underwater. These shallow dives I've been doing lately are great for bottom times, but my circulation is getting a workout. I didn't see anything too exciting on this dive, but (except for the hypothermia) it was a decent way to spend a morning.
