It's been a little quiet on the site lately, so I thought I would share a dive that we did today.  Kim and I had not been in the water for weeks because we recently brought home a Bernese Mountain Dog pup, and keeping him out of trouble has proved to be a full time job.  Ten Mile Point has to be the best shore dive on Southern Vancouver Island.  I have lived in Victoria for almost two years now and this was my third ever dive at the site because the strong currents in the area make diving it only possible during slack tides. 

We geared up and scrambled over the few rocks separating the parking lot and the water.  A couple of quick checks and we descended to the bottom of the wall which runs at 80'-90' deep.  Ten Mile is one of those dive sites where you are hard pressed to find a square centimeter of bare rock.  Almost immediately we came across a huge Cabezon sitting on the sea floor.  Not ten meters from the giant we found a Red Irish Lord.  Next we followed a small reef running perpendicular to the wall and found a Giant Pacific Octopus posing nicely in a wide, and shallow, crack. 

At the twenty minute mark we turned the dive and ascended to 60'.  The variety of sponges, tunnicates, corals, annenomes, crabs, fish, invertebrates, etc., etc. make Ten Mile a photographer's, or biologist's, dream.  I was swimming along looking at some of the site's smaller critters when I looked up to find a Cabezon head filling my vision.  The guy was clearly guarding his eggs and began swimming a tight figure eight pattern around the mass.  Remembering the time that half of Kim's head was swallowed by a protective male, we gave him a wide berth.  Countless Rock Fish and Lingcod were to be seen all over the site.  Just before it was time to thumb the dive we found a trail of crab shells leading into some thick seaweed.  Moving away some leaves we found a small crack with, judging by the size of the suction cups, an absolutely massive GPO inside.  We thumbed the dive and spent about five minutes of deco with the sun shining through a maze of kelp forest.

Getting out of our drysuits in the June sun and ocean breeze I was reminded why no matter where I dive in the world there really is no better place than home.  We hope everybody else is enjoying the beginning of the summer diving season.

Chris