Sea Sabres Scuba Diving club, Southern
California, Fullerton
Sea
Sabres
Dive
Spots
Vancouver
Island, Canada
DIVING
THE BIG GREEN
By: Walter Marti
2002
On July 21, I departed for Victoria, British
Colombia to meet up with the rest of the Sea Sabre gang, that would embark on a
five day live-aboard on the Clavella.
After being ‘underway’ for over 13 hours (I could almost have driven
there), I arrived in Victoria. Without
luggage! It arrived four hours later. Thanks for the adventure, Alaska
Airlines! I finally, met up with the
entire Sea Sabres contingent, Linda Blanchard.
We spent the night in Victoria, and took a leisurely and
incredible scenic, six hour drive to Port Hardy. At Port Hardy we were unable to immediately locate the
Clavella. After four hours, I started
making frantic phone calls. I was told
where the boat was docked and waited another two hours until someone showed
up. The deck hand, Peter, had been
waiting for us at a local pub. That sounded
a lot nicer than waiting in a car, to bad no one told us about that. In all fairness, Linda did get an email to
this meeting spot. The problem was, we
were half way into our scenic drive when it was sent to her. Ahhh, more adventure!
The boat was built in the 30's by Boeing Aircraft,
and I don’t think it has ever been updated.
But, it was charming. This
being only the second ‘liveaboard’ I’ve been on.
I’d equate it as the ‘Westerly’ of live-aboards. (Jim, I mean that in a good way). The Westerly at least updated from the hand
pump marine head, to an electric head. As
for the captain of the Clavella, John deBoeck, I have no ill words, a very
knowledgeable, capable and amusing character. To introduce the remainder of the people aboard, Amos Nachoum, a
professional underwater photographer (www.biganimals.com),
and that was the entire roster. On our trip to the first dive site, we were
treated to a breaching humpback whale. Why
wasn’t he in Hawaii? Why wasn’t I
in Hawaii??
Diving is slack dependant. They have about eighteen foot tidal changes. This causes some ripping currents. Our motis operandi was wake up at 6
am, grab a cup of coffee, gear up, board the skiff and off we went on our first
dive of the day. Come back, take off
all gear, warm up have breakfast, nap,
wake up at noon, and do it all again.
Every six hours. Water temperatures was 48 to 52 degrees, with all the
down time, I never got cold. Visibility was a green 30 to 50 feet. It was a very relaxing trip.
The captain tried to impress us with on of the top
dives of the area. Browning Wall,
it goes down hundreds of feet from the surface. Covered in white metridiums, soft corals, metridiums, lots of
diverse invertebrates, metridiums, a macro heaven, and more metridiums. When a metridium is spotted off an oil rig,
or in Monterey, everyone just ohh’s and ahh’s.
It is true, what Dave Gunning told me after his trip to Vancouver
Island, ‘they make a pretty good hand hold in a current’. After the dive the three of us were
unimpressed. It’s hard for me to take
macro video shots on a sheer vertical wall, I can’t anchor my camera. Linda loved it but, been there done that. Amos, thought it was nice, what was the name
of his website again?? John suggested
we try a spot for wolf eels, not very picturesque, but surrounded by wreckage
of a sunken ship. Great dive. Lots of stuffs. And, I could anchor my video
camera. Linda and I didn’t have to find
the wolf eels, they found us. At least
one did. He came out and was all over
Linda. She had to push him away to get
a picture. I got some great video of
the two interacting. Amos, went the
wrong way and didn’t see them. After
seeing my video, he was impressed. “No
one has shots like these!” He inquired
if we could go again. Fine by us. He
asked Linda what it would take for her to leave her camera behind and haul a
second camera for him, and be his model.
She told him that a great shot of her and the eel that she could put on
the wall would be payment. Deal!!
My duty was to find the same spot. Which I did, and the eel found us
again. He unloaded 72 shots on the two
of them, I got more video. We all came
back elated. And six hours later, we
did it again. Linda, the model and Amos
shooting 72 more.
After the eels we tried a change of pace. More beautiful metridium clad walls. I spied a fish I wanted to video. It dashed into a hole, I looked inside and
didn’t see anything. Outside I found a
pretty little nudibranch and set up a macro shot. Suddenly my camera was being grabbed from me. I look up and see a
six foot octopus with four arms on my camera and four still in that hole. After a quick tug of war, he realized it
wasn’t as tasty as he had thought.
There were high wind warning for the first few day we
were there. The Clavella hid out in a
quiet cove on Nigei Island, at The Hideaway, a floating house, lodge,
boat slips, and miscellaneous out buildings (all needing work). This was our base of operation. After the fourth day, the winds subsided and
we finally moved on to a new locale, Shushartie Bay on Vancouver
Island. There we made three more
dives for wolf eels, as well as octopus.
When returned back to Port Hardy, Linda and I
went south to Port McNeil to do some whale watching. We went out on a boat, and whales we did see. Lots of Orcas, Killer Whales and a sole
humpback.
It was a really enjoyable, and different trip. My idea of vacation always included, palm
trees, rum drinks with little umbrellas and bikinis. Not conifers, rum toddies and drysuits. Would I do it again? I
could be talked into it. I
experienced many things I hadn’t
before, and enjoyed them all.
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