I decided to play hooky from work today, and head out for a dive at Whytecliff park, as some of you may not know "The Cut" is one of the many dive sites the Great Whytecliff park has to offer. As Jake Wall once said to me "you guys claim to have numerous sites to dive here but they are all just different parts of Whytecliff that you give different names" this may be so but every time i surface from a dive at the Cut (Or Whytecliff #3 as Jake likes to call it) I am always satisfied.

Landon demonstrating proper trim

Todays dive consisted of Landon Shantz, Myself, Nitrox 32% and some Caffe Artigiano Americanos! Todays dive was unique in many aspects. It was the first time i had been in the water with Landon in over a year, we had perfect tides and i saw one of the coolest things i have ever seen underwater!

This dive profile we completed today at the cut is one of my favourite. 100' for 20min heading west from the cut, 70' for 20 min heading east back toward the cut, and 50' for 20 ish minutes heading towards the bay and looking at the plumose garden. I lead this dive since i brought my camera and would be the stopping to take pictures. The vis was quite good for Whytecliff today 20-30' or so, but we had some very thick overcast, so ambient light was limited in the deeper portion of the dive.

Golfball Crab

As we swam west from the cut, the dive so far was quite routine as far as marine life goes. We saw the standard cloud sponges, boot sponges, decorator crabs, gleenlings and a number of different rock fish, but this was about to be one dive i would remember for a long time. Once you have dived a certain site or area enough times you come to expect to see certain things, and other things not so much. One thing i don't expect to see at Whytecliff is a Giant pacific octopus with a 15-20 foot arm span just sitting out in the open in perfect view. Once i spotted the great beast, i immediately directed my light away from him, as not to startle him, and proceeded to signal Landon to "hold" and to "look over here" We were both ecstatic about our find, and proceeded to spend the next five minutes or so checking this guy/gal out. He did not seem bothered by our presence and i managed to snap a couple of shady photos (god i wish i had some strobes!), and some video even though my heart was racing and i think i was in shock over what we had found.

Shady Pic of the GPO

Once our time was up at depth we proceeded with the planned profile, we did not see anymore GPO, but we did see numerous box crab, golf ball crabs and Rhino crabs, which i managed to grab a couple quality shots of. Our total dive time was roughly 60 minutes. When i look at a octopus of that size i can't help but think of those old sea stories about the giant octopus that take down the ships and sailors, obviously this guy is no where near that size, but you do have to respect a creature of that size, and realize that you are at their mercy in the aquatic environment.

Absolutely fantastic dive overall, and like i have said to many people, "The Cut is definitely one of my favourite dive sites"

AJ