The first thing I noticed at this site was the colour: orange, pink, red, purple all over the bottom - sponges encrusting the rocks and strawberry anemone carpets, without bare rock in sight. The beautiful aqua-coloured water, bluer than the emerald green I'm used to.
The other dive group found octos and wolf eels, but J and I were interested in less obvious things. Found a few Red Irish Lords, which blended into the surroundings beautifully. One was guarding eggs! Aggregated nipple sponge, rigid finger sponges, northern staghorn bryozoan, semisuberites cribrosa, and a giant acorn barnacle in the act of shedding its foot were highlights. Jill found 6 PSKC juveniles at the end of the dive.
Second dive of the day, and it was a little disappointing... the charter took us to Argonaut, which can be accessed as a shore dive. Oh well, I still had never been before. Definite highlight on this dive was a leopard flatworm (!!!) and the abundance of nudis: Heath's, barnacle, common grey, monterey, red-fingered, Nanaimo, Triopha modesta, Adalaria proxima, cadlinas, rainbow, thick-horned, giant white, berthella chacei. Also a few cute little grunt sculpins. And an orange cup coral mystery - right next to orange was a yellow version?!?
We braved the hill down and got in the water, only for me to forget that I left my fins in the car. There was some swearing on my part! The dive was good, although a little sad - we found the GPO mom deceased in her den. Hopefully the eggs hatched successfully. I had fun taking macro photos of scallop eyes. Highlight was seeing the Chonky Pink Star - it's HUGE!
Getting out was a challenge - waves and current had picked up and we had to time our exit over slippery rocks.
Brilliant night dive at Maple Bay tonight! Red octos galore (10+) - at one point I was taking a photo of one, knocked a bottle, and another one jetted out in front of me! Other highlights include a padded sculpin, J getting scared out of her wits by a dead lion's mane jelly that suddenly appeared in her face out of the darkness, cockscombs, gunnels, cute buried/digging red rock crabs, batwing sea slugs, sparkling shrimp, pregnant red rocks and graceful crabs, and a friendly pacific cod. And I finally saw a grunt sculpin actually in a giant acorn barnacle shell! Another highlight came in the last 10 minutes in the sand on the left side of the pier, where we found 5 showy snailfish - including one out swimming! They're pretty rare up our way, so it was nice to find them and get J excited about something I found (usually it's the opposite!)
Uneventful dive without many highlights other than a quick drive-by visit from 3 sea lions. The story today was 1st dive of 2022, snow, peaceful calm, and brilliant viz!