Blair and myself had been talking for a while about checking out the wall at Copper Cove, and linking it up with the north wall at Whytecliff. Well, today was the first dive in a number of dives to come.

Blair Logging some Trigger Time

I had dove the wall a couple years back as a novice recreational diver, but never really thought much of it since then. I was messing around on google earth one night looking for potential sites in that area, and realized how close Copper cove is to lookout. I have dived from Whytecliff to Lookout, and Lookout to Whytecliff, so I figured "why not dive from Copper cove to Whytecliff?" After looking into it a little further, I realized that there is a contour of about 170 feet that runs all the way from Copper cove past Lookout, and connects to the north wall.

Chorilia Longipes

Armed with 240ft3 of 25/25, 40ft3 of O₂, Scooters and P-valves, we stumbled into the water over the slippery rocks and started our pre-dive checks. We went over the plan one more time and scootered out in a north west direction. After about 4 minutes on the scooters with a quick stop to square away equipment we reached 120 feet. No wall in sight. We changed to a south west direction running parallel with the bottom contour, and reached a wall within a minute.

Alan on Deco

As we scootered along the wall we saw a number of cloud sponges, Feather stars and I even saw a vermilion rock fish. Things were looking good, but the wall only lasted 5 minutes, and after a few more minutes of scootering along the sand we headed up to 100 feet. It took a good 5 minutes or so before we reached any type of wall, but the walls only lasted a few minutes on the scooter then another patch of sand began. This trend continued for the next 15 minutes until we decided to head back. There were also a couple of spots that had a large collection of boulders that looked perfect for wolf eels and octos, but all we saw were Rockfish, some Decorator crabs and Ling cod egg masses. We spend the next 20 minutes retracing our steps between 80-60 feet. Once we got back to the bay we scootered around for a bit and found a nice little Plumose garden closer to west side of the bay.

From the Desk of Blair Peake

Deco consisted of 1 minute stops up from 60 feet, and 10 minutes at 20 feet on oxygen with a 5 minute ascent to the surface from 20 feet. We averaged 90 feet for 55 minutes. The total dive time was 73 minutes.

I definitely want to explore the wall a little deeper next time to see if we have any better luck at 140-170 feet. From the looks of it, I highly doubt we will be able to find a continuous wall from Copper Cove to Whytecliff, but regardless it will be a fun dive from Copper Cove to Whytecliff even if we see sand 50% of the time.