I came here in November as a second dive after Race Rocks. The small island is hard to see against the backdrop of Church Point. It's so close to shore that it seems part of Vancouver island, but there is a narrow channel between them. Near the North-East tip of Swordfish Island, there is a vertical crack on the surface marking a tunnel that goes through the island underwater. There were several seals and sea lions hanging around when we arrived. We jumped in and were surrounded by a huge school of herring swirling through the bull kelp. Visibility was around 40 feet and I could see the entrance to the tunnel 15-20 feet down while I was floating on the surface. The entrance to the tunnel was framed by plumose anemones and was fairly small, just enough room for a diver to carefully swim in without scraping anything. As soon as I swam in, the cavern opened up a bit. It was maybe 8 feet wide and 8 feet high. Light shone down through holes in the ceiling. The invertebrate life on the walls and ceiling was quite colourful. Other than a healthy covering of plumose anemones, there were small pink soft corals, hydroids, colonial tunicates, cup corals, dahlia anemones, etc. The floor of the cavern was mostly sand so it was easy to kneel on the bottom to take pictures without wrecking anything. The tunnel wasn't very long, -I'd guess about 20 feet at the most. I swam through it and back and then went through again, and then, just because I could, I went through again. We then swam South-West along the outside of the island at an average depth of around 60 feet. The rock bottom sloped down fairly steeply with a few small walls. There wasn't as much colour here as in the cavern, but there were scattered crimson and fish-eating anemones, cup corals, orange colonial tunicates and nudibranchs here and there. There was one area around 80 feet deep covered with plumose anemones. A large school of black rockfish swam around them. Several vermilion rockfish had joined their school. I saw a yellow vase sponge and a juvenile puget sound king crab nearby. Our plan was to swim around the South-West point of the island and finish our dive in the shallow channel, but as we reached the point, the current was too strong to force our way through. We ended our dive hanging on to bull kelp and blowing in the current with masses of herring swarming around us.
