Here's the trip report ... with some additional photos ...
It started with a long day. The alarm went off at 2:30 and I was leaving at 3:15 for an early hook-up with my team mates for the trip ... Curt Bowen and John Rawlings from Advanced Diver Magazine, and photographer Bruce Yates, who would be carpooling with me on the trip. Our fifth member, Valerie, would be meeting us in Tahsis. She had gone up a day earlier to spend some time with her folks in Nanaimo. With the border crossing, ferry ride up the Inside Passage between mainland and Vancouver Island, and 375 miles of driving, it was roughly a 12-hour trip ... the final 40 miles or so on an unpaved logging road through the rugged interior mountains of northern Vancouver Island. Our destination, the tiny fishing/logging village of Tahsis tucked neatly inside an inlet of Nootka Sound on the northwestern side of Vancouver Island.
If you ever get the urge to go visit someplace rather off the beaten track, this is a great place to go. Summer months see the town swell to roughly 1500 people ... mostly vacationers who come here for the great fishing ... but once summer wanes, Tahsis turns back into a sleepy town of about 300 where everybody knows everybody. We walked into the local pub on our first night in town and were greeted with a friendly smile and the comment "Oh, you must be the divers". There is one dive operation in town ... Tahtsa Dive Charters ...
http://www.tahtsadivecharters.com/ The sign on the door announces shop hours as "9ish to 5ish" although owners Scott and Jude proved to be as accommodating as they were knowledgeable about the dive sites and conditions. Scott runs the boat, while his wife Jude runs the shop ... and their friendly, outgoing nature added a great deal to the charm of the trip.
Our first day of diving was going to be a "shakedown" ... to get us acclimated with local waters. Scott was a bit concerned about visibility, due to the fact that a rather intense storm had passed through the few days prior to our arrival. But although the runoff had left a bit of a murky halocline on the upper layers, once below the halocline, vis was consistently 50 feet or better. Our initial dive was on a place called "Boulder Alley" ... so named because it was the remains of a rather impressive rock slide. The cliffs topside showed clear evidence of where the house-sized boulders we'd be diving on came from. Dropping down, we immediately found a giant dendronotid nudibranch feeding on some zoanthids ...
Further down, the boulders were covered in boot sponges and crinoids. Peering inito a boot sponge, I noticed a decorated warbonnet peering back out at me.
As the dive progressed, a current caught us and took Valerie and me for a ride along a particularly steep section of the boulder field. Motion caught my eye as I noticed a dancing dentronotid riding along beside us ...
After a few minutes, the current dumped us into a sheltered inlet, where we were able to complete our dive in calm, relatively clear water.
For our second dive, Scott dropped us on Nootka Sound's signature dive ... Mozino Point. From a structural perspective, this dive reminded me of Browning Pass (Port Hardy), but the strawberry anemones and sponges reminded me more of San Miguel (Channel Islands). And since we were only going to recreational depths on this dive, the best was yet to come. But this dive was, itself, utterly spectacular. Carpets of strawberry anemones started at about 40 feet, and at about 70 feet the cloud sponges started to appear. By 90 feet, some of them were big enough to require license plates.
Turning toward home, a haze hung over the valley that sheltered the town ... the result of burning snags at a logging operation a few miles from town.
Day two was supposed to be special ... it was Valerie's birthday, and Scott had planned to take us on a roughly 1-1/2 hour boat ride out to where Nootka Sound meets the Pacific Ocean to a pinnacle known as The Garden. Sadly, tragedy had struck the evening before when Valerie got a call that her mother had suffered a heart attack the night before and had passed away. Valerie had decided to stay and do the dives, then head back to Nanaimo to take care of family matters. The boat was subdued, but the sight of some humpback whales on the way out heightened the excitement of the day.
The Garden was truly beautiful ... a massive pinnacle dropping down to well below recreational depths, and just covered in strawberry anemones, literal walls of rock scallops, and dozens of giant dendronotid nudibranchs. Floating above us were a maze of large jellies of several varieties. Since Valerie's dive business is known as Jellyfish Productions, I decided it was appropriate to get a picture of the birthday girl with her totem.
Our surface interval was spent driving the boat around looking at a fur seal rookery, as well as seeing a few more humpback whales. Unfortunately I had neglected to bring a surface camera ... and the wide-angle lens on my underwater housing wasn't going to do much to get pictures of those subjects.
Our second dive was back to The Gardens, but at a different location ... a point off the island that dropped steeply down into the abyss. This part of the site was more sheltered than the pinnacle, and lacked the colorful anemone cover, but made up for it with massive schools of fish. It was like swimming in a giant aquarium.
On the way home, Scott spotted a bear sow and cub and went in close enough for Curt and Bruce to get some nice pictures with their massive zoom lenses.
Our third day was when we had planned to finally go see that which brings divers to Nootka Sound ... giant red gorgonian corals that live in the depths. The tiniest one can be found at around the limit of recreational depths, and they start to get interesting at around 150. The largest ones can be found below around 180 feet. Valerie and I had planned to head down to that depth, while Curt and John were headed below 200 feet in search of the monster specimens for their upcoming ADM article. Since Valerie had to leave, I decided to follow Curt and John down to about 170, then peel off and go it alone for the dive.
When we arrived, Scott was a little bit concerned about the current ... so he decided to go investigate. Shrugging into his dive gear, he dropped overboard and went down to about 130 to see what the current was like. Coming back aboard about 10 minutes later, he told us that while it was a bit stiff, it was manageable if we followed his directions down a cut in the wall where we'd be sheltered from the worst of it. As it turned out, we got blown a bit south of the cut, and at times had to deal with current that felt more like the entrance to Devil's Ear than just about anything else I've experienced in the past. But once down past about 150 the current petered out. So at 170ish, I waved good-bye to my companions and watched them disappear into the abyss. Then I went looking for photo subjects. Found some ...
At about 20 minutes into the dive, I headed back toward the surface, deciding that discretion was the better part of valor and that I should play it conservative since I was down here on my own. About 15 minutes later I had made my way up through the cloud sponges ... stopping for a few more photos along the way ... and was eagerly searching for whatever else I could find to take pictures of.
Ran into John and Curt while doing my deco, and ended my deepest-ever solo dive after 73 magnificently memorable minutes.
For our second dive we were heading off to a place called Shark Point ... so named because it once was the site of a candlefish processing plant that had attracted a rather large population of blue sharks. But since the plant had shut down, the sharks were long gone. Now it was the sloping reef created by a rock sticking a few feet out of the water about 50 feet from shore. For this dive I decided to go macro ... once again solo ... but one of my strobes decided not to function, so despite the lovely scenery underwater I had managed only one decent shot ... a GPO sleeping off a Happy Meal ...
Before we had left the dock that morning, a pair of tuna boats had tied up in front of us at the dock. They were selling freshly caught albacore tuna for $2 per pound, and Curt had bought one and taken it to the folks at the Pub where we'd been eating dinner every night. They agreed to cook it up for us, and that's what we feasted on that evening ... it was the best tuna I've ever tasted.
Curt and John wanted to go explore what was below the base of a large cliff we'd been asking about the previous day. Scott informed us he'd been down the wall to about 70 feet and hadn't found much, but the two fo them wanted to go deeper and see what was down there. Bruce and I opted to head back to Shark Point ... I was hoping to get some macro shots I'd missed the previous day. Turned out to be a good decision. Besides all the lovely little critters I had spotted the previous day, I also had my only encounter with a Puget Sound King Crab on this dive ...
After a lovely 70-minute dive, we proceeded back across the inlet to pick up Curt and John ... who hadn't yet surfaced. Apparently there wasn't a whole lot on the wall down to the 160 feet they investigated ... but at least now they knew.
After making our way back to the dock we decided to do something a bit different ... go snorkel the local river with the migrating salmon. The river is about a five-minute drive across town. We arrived just in time to see a momma bear and her cub making their way upriver from where we were planning to put in, below a bridge where a short trail gave us easy access to the river. Wearing just our drysuit, mask, fins and snorkel, we drifted like corks down past a pool where dozens of salmon were hanging out. After making our way downriver, we'd paddle back into the shallows, remove our fins, and walk back upstream for another run at the pool. After a couple attempts at decent pictures, I went back to the car and put on a weight belt, that would allow me to freedive down into the pool to where the salmon were. That allowed me to get some decent shots, despite the fact that the rushing current made freediving for pictures rather hard work.
After one dive I was told by Scott, who'd been taking pictures of us from shore, that while we were all laying face-down in the water, a male bear had crossed the river less than 50 feet from where we were. Almost sorry I missed it ...
That evening at dinner, Curt mentioned to Scott that he would like to get some night shots of the dock, but that the town streetlights would wash out the picture. Scott made a phone call and said he could arrange to turn off the town streetlights for a couple hours. You know you're in a small town when the guy who runs the dive shop can get the keys to turn off all the streetlights in town in order for somebody to take a picture ... and sure enough, the shot was spectacular.
Our final day of diving dawned in pea soup fog. So far we'd lucked into fabulous weather all week, despite gloomy forecasts for the past three days. We figured this would be our day to get the bad weather ... but once again as we motored out of the inlet we drove out of the fog bank into beautiful, sunny weather. The first dive of our final day would be back to Mozino Point for another go at the gorgonians. Once again I'd be going solo, while Curt went down deeper to video the big ones. John and Bruce had opted to stay shallower and play in the cloud sponges.
Curt and I headed down the cut ... this time the current was moderate enough to not really be a factor, and we made it to 160 feet rather quickly. At that point I stopped and Curt kept going. I didn't realize he had wanted me to come down to a particularly nice patch of gorgonians at 180 feet, so I decided to stay a bit shallower and take pictures of some smaller specimens. I particularly like this one, because you can see the coral polyps out feeding in what current was available at the time.
About 15 minutes into the dive, I noticed that I was getting wet along my back and butt ... and since I was looking at a deco obligation, I decided to cut the dive short and start heading up. I played around in the sponges for a while, running into both Curt and John from time to time, and eventually ended my deco after only a 57-minute dive. By then I could feel the water had seeped all the way down to the back of my knees. No idea why ... I can only speculate that something like a loose thread had managed to get caught in the dry zipper. But it was still a wonderful dive, and the sunny weather topside would help me get dry enough for our final dive.
Bruce and I were the only ones who opted for the last dive of the trip. Curt and John stayed topside to complete the interview with Scott for the ADM articles they're working on. We opted to end the trip where we had begun it ... Boulder Alley. Dropping down we were treated to nearly crystal-clear conditions and no current whatsoever. Making our way down to about 100 feet we explored the thickest part of the boot sponges and crinoids that provide shelter for so much of the life here. After about a half-hour, Bruce opted to head shallower than me, and I spent the final half-hour of my trip in blissful solitude, slowly drifting along in a building current just zenning out on the beauty of the surroundings. My final 10 minutes of so were hanging in a kelp bed watching the tiny inverterbrates that make their home in the kelp. None of this stuff would have made a great picture ... but memories are something else to treasure, so I clipped off the camera and just hung out in what for me is the ultimate form of relaxation, watching these tiny creatures go on about their life.
Finally the dive was over. As I clambered back aboard ... the last diver out of the water ... the rainy weather we'd been threatened with all week arrived. We headed back to town in a gentle rain, appreciating the fact that it had held off until it didn't matter anymore.
I'd been wanting to come to Nootka Sound for a long time ... and it proved to be every bit as alluring as I'd hoped it would be. My next trip will be with more doubles and trimix, for a deeper, longer look at the gorgonians. This trip was just a taste of what the area has to offer ... and what a taste it was.
Magnificent ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
But trust me, there was plenty to see (and great vis in which to see it) even at 100 fsw and up! 
