I've been diving here once before about 14 years ago. I came back on Feb. 1, 2023. I parked at the end of Noble Rd. near the short public access trail to the water. Slack was at 9:00 in the morning so when I got here it was still dark (the surface photos in daylight were taken after the dive). My plan was to be in the water by 8:30, but it was still pretty dark so I waited until 9:00, when the slack was changing to a very small flood. It was still barely light, but I didn't want to push the current tables any farther.
It was pretty dark underwater, almost like a night dive, but visibility seemed to be around 40-50'. I swam down the stepped rocky slope. Years ago when I dove here, I saw carpets of strawberry anemones starting at only 20' deep. This time the rocks seemed strangely-bare. Below 30' deep or so there were lots of cup corals, but I didn't see any strawberry anemones at all until I reached 70' deep.
Below 70' deep, the rock walls were suddenly covered with most of the colourful invertebrates that I remembered. The only difference is that there were much less strawberry anemones than there were 14 years ago. Between the clumps of yellow sponges, there were lots of bare patches. I seem to remember these gaps used to be full of strawberry anemones. A look back at some of my old photos from that previous dive confirmed this. It's strange that many of the strawberry anemone colonies seem to have died off and nothing has taken their place yet. This steep rocky area went down to 95' deep and then there was a flat, rubble and boulder plain stretching out into Discovery Pass. I assume that the bottom would drop off again if I swam out farther, but I was deeper and farther from shore than I was comfortable with since I was feeling more current than expected.
The current had become worryingly-strong. It seemed to be swirling around in different directions as I struggled along. I started heading back up the slope towards shore.
Despite the dramatic reduction in strawberry anemones since my last dive here in 2009, this is still a great dive with colourful and diverse invertebrate life (especially sponges). The simplistic, jumping-to-conclusions part of me wonders if the strawberry anemones might have been affected by the outfall for the Quathiaski Cove sewer treatment plant. This system has been in place since the 1990's, but in 2017, several dozen more residences were connected to it and the outfall was replaced around 2020. I'm not sure where the previous outfall terminated, but the current marine chart shows it ending about 80' deep, 150-200 meters from where I had been diving. I wonder if this tip of Whisky Point is now subjected to greater freshwater flows from the outfall compared to years ago and it has changed the conditions for the strawberry anemones. I did a second dive later the same day at another spot ("Middle of the Road") just over 1/2 kilometer farther South and the strawberry anemones there were thriving.
