I used to dive here all the time when I lived in Vancouver. Whytecliff Park is in the Horseshoe Bay neighborhood in West Vancouver and is probably the busiest dive site in the city, especially on weekends. It's a marine protected area, which means the harvesting of marine life is prohibited. There are washrooms (seasonal), a rinse area and change rooms for divers. There are a few different diving areas around the bay. If you look out to the left, there is Whyte Islet which is connected to the beach at low tide. There are shallow walls on the sides of the islet that don't go much deeper than 60 feet unless you swim out past the tip. There isn't a whole lot of life on them - mostly sea stars and you might see an octopus. Most divers don't spend much time here. On the right side of the bay, there is a day marker off the point which marks a reef. This reef drops down in dramatic walls with a few ledges here and there. You can see feather stars, forests of plumose anemones, lingcod, octopus,sea pens, rockfish, dogfish, painted greenlings, etc. There are sponges if you go deep. The rocks plunge hundreds of feet here. In the shallows around the reef, there are usually a few harbour seals that are extremely friendly. They can come quite close and sometimes tug on divers' fins. At night or on dark, deep dives, they sometimes use divers' light beams to hunt fish. One kept charging fish that I was trying to photograph 100 feet down. If you go around the point on the right, there is the site that divers call "the cut". There is a small canyon on the surface that marks this spot. The wall continues here with more plumose anemones in places and some sections of wall covered with zoanthids. There is the same kind of marine life as at the "day marker" including sponges deeper down. The visibility here can be pretty horrible in late spring and early summer from plankton blooms and river runoff, but can open up nicely to 30-50 feet and more during the rest of the year. There is usually a murky surface layer (again, mostly in late spring/early summer) that is mostly fresh water. It's strange to accidentally swallow some water 20 feet down and find it tastes fresh. Below this layer, it's usually much clearer.
