mini-trip report: Galliano Island (BC, Canada)

mini-trip report: Galliano Island (BC, Canada)

Post by Bryan Douglas Crawfo » Fri, 06 May 1994 04:54:19

I've been out for several diving-weekends over the past couple of years
after which I've decided to write up mini-trip reports to post here, but I
keep putting it off 'till it was so long ago that I no longer feel like writing
about it.  So this time I've decided to write first and procrastinate later.

My partner and I were fortunate to be invited to stay at a friend's cabin on
Galliano Island (just off Vancouver Island, BC) this past weekend.  We
caught the ferry from Tsawassen to Sturdies Bay on Galliano on Friday
night, after hastily packing up our gear, including a newly purchased dry
suit.  After a 1 hr ferry ride, and 1 hr drive on the twisty Galliano roads, we
arrived at the cabin around midnight.

We wanted to have a fairly relaxing weekend, so we didn't punish ourselves
by getting up a the crack of dawn the next day, but we did manage to drag
ourselves down to the water at Spanish Hills government wharf for a shore
dive by around 11:00am.  My partner & buddy (henceforth 'Robyn') was
equipped with a newly purchased (but used) drysuit, so we had to do some
configuring vis weights, hoses, fin straps etc. before we could descend.  
The vis was surprisingly good for an ebbing tide off Galliano (which
receives a fair bit of run off from the Fraser river), varying from about 15-
30 feet.  A sloping shell and gravel bottom populated with sea pens, tube
dwelling anemones, rainbow-frilled nudibranchs (aka Spanish dancers...I
can't remember the Latin), sand dabs, and dungeoness crabs gives way to a
rocky wall running north-south at about 45fsw.  The wall was lovely, with
loads of plumose anemones, quill back rockfish, long fin gunnels, sea
perch, kelp greenling, painted greenling, feather hydrozoans, stag-horn and
lacy bryozoans, brachiopods, tunicates and crinoids.  We swam along the
wall against the current at about 65' till one of us reached 1500 psi.  Then
we ascended to about 30', and drifted back with the current though the
kelp forest with the sunlight streaming down through the golden fronds.  I
was surprised when Robyn signaled that she was getting cold, so we
surfaced after only a 34 minute dive.

It turns out that Robyn's suit leaks like a sieve, so it is going back.  She
dove wet the rest of the weekend, having brought her 7mm wet suit along
in case the new drysuit didn't work out.

We delivered our tanks to George Parsons who runs a filling station and
dive boat off Galliano to have them filled while we had lunch and warmed
up.  We went to pick up the tanks and met George at his filling station at
Madrona Lodge.  The last of the tanks were still being filled so we chatted
with him for a bit, and he suggested that we might dive right there off the
boat ramp.

The tide was very low by this time, making the entry rather tricky, with
kelp-covered rocks at the water's edge.  I usually carry my fins out into the
water and put them on while I'm chest deep, so I can't fall over.  However,
the water at the end of the boat ramp as 45' deep at low tide, and there was
still a significant current running, so you'd have to have everything on
before you entered the water, and walking around on kelp-covered rocks
with fins on is a trick I've never mastered.

We managed, with dignity only slightly bruised, to get into the water, upon
which we descended quickly to the bottom, where the current was less
strong, and there were bare patches of rock to grab if necessary.  The wall
was incredible...there wasn't a square centimeter unoccupied.  The most
*** creatures were the encrusting tube worms which form lovely, and
delicate colonies all over the wall.  The colonies are further decorated with
brightly colored blobs of colonial tunicates (we saw pinks, purples, whites,
yellows, reds, and oranges).  Interspersed among the tube worm colonies
were brightly colored encrusting sponges, plumose anemones, lacy
bryozoans, ostrich plume tube worms, giant red urchins, indescribably
beautiful nudibranchs of a dozen varieties, feather stars (crinoids), basket
stars, brilliantly colored sea cucumbers, fantastic fish of which my favorite
was the grunt sculpin, with its bright orange tail, and comical scuttling
locomotion.  The current slowed to almost nothing as we reached the
bottom of the wall, so we swam north along the wall, shining our lights in
crevices, and grooving on the scenery, till we reached the 1500psi
turnaround again, and again, ascended to around 30'and headed back.  The
wall was, if anything, even more spectacular at 30', such that I found
myself kind of dazed by the sensory stimulation.  We wound up
overshooting the exit, and finished our dive in a shallow bay full of kelp
and lovely fish (including a *big* penpoint gunnel and lots of black-eyed
gobies) just to the south of the boat ramp.  We were so impressed with this
site we decided we had to do it again. the next day.

That evening we had planned a night dive, but everyone was rather tired,
and there being a number of non-divers at the cabin as well, a game of
castle risk broke out, and we scraped the dive plans.  This actually turned
out to be a treat for me anyway, as I *never* win at risk (except once when
I was baby sitting, and I managed to beat a 9-year-old), but through a
combination of brilliant strategy and uncanny good luck, I managed to
conquer the world by around 3:00am (my strategy relied heavily on
everyone else falling asleep).

Since we had to catch the ferry fairly early on Sunday, we could only get in
one dive.  We returned to the Madrona Lodge boat ramp for, what turned
out to be another excellent dive.  It wasn't as sunny as it had been on
Saturday, and the tide was higher, both of which made the entry easier, as
I was neither sweltering in my dry suit, nor on the verge of falling and
cracking my head on a rock.  The wall was still stunning, but on this dive
we encountered several more basket stars, and a beautiful big Puget Sound
king crab at the base of the wall.  I also discovered a pile of bottles at one
point, which I amused myself with by filling them with air and launching
them at the surface :-)  On this dive our navigating was perfect, and we
ascended exactly at the boat ramp for an easy exit.

All-in-all a lovely weekend.  If anyone is interested in more details feel free
to send me an e-mail.

Cheers


Institute of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby BC
Canada