I've only been diving here once before, about 13 years ago. The sidescan image shows a long wall stretching out from the North point of Taylor Bay. This wall goes straight out for quite a way, eventually bottoming out at around 200' deep. Last time I was here, I reached around 100' deep, but the wall seemed a bit more bare than many of the other walls on Gabriola Island. My memory of that dive is a bit vague by now so I decided to finally give it another try. I came back on June 28, 2024. There is a choice of 2 public access trails that lead to either side of the point from Decourcy Drive. I chose the Northern-most trail and walked out over the flat sandstone shore towards the tip of the point.
I swam out from the tip of the point towards the wall. Visibility in the shallows was around 10-15'. I reached the top of the wall and dropped down it to a sandy bottom only 30' deep. Last time, when I reached the base of the wall, it was 60' deep so I must have swam out at a different angle this time and reached the wall closer to shore. The sand at the base of the wall was full of giant nudibranchs and moon snail egg casings.
As I swam farther out along the base of the wall, it gradually became deeper and the visibility improved. Visibility ended up being a very bright 40'. At around 50-60' deep, there started to be lots of feather stars. There were a few rockfish. Last time I saw some tiger rockfish. This time I didn't, but I saw some young yelloweye rockfish instead. I swam out as far as where the base of the wall reached 100' deep, but the wall seemed more bare there. Most of the life was between 60-80' deep. I only saw one boot sponge and no cloud sponges.
When I had reached the 100'-deep portion of the wall, I wasn't sure how far from shore I was and even though I didn't feel any current, I was hesitant to be stuck far out from shore with a decompression obligation so I ascended up to the top of the wall. The top here was 40' deep, which means this wall was a straight-down drop of 60'. I was surprised to see feather stars up at the top of the wall this shallow. I also saw a painted anemone on the edge of the wall. This was the only anemone I saw on the entire dive, which was also strange. We used to call them "Christmas anemones" since their colour was usually green and red. In the last 20 years, their colour seems to have shifted to be more yellow/orange. I swam back towards shore near the top of the wall.
My opinion of this place is sort-of the same as last time. This wall doesn't really have as much invertebrate life on it as many of the other walls on Gabriola Island. It's still a nice, dramatic wall, but the hike along the sandstone point and the semi-long swim makes you work for it.
