Thursday, October 08, 2009

Vancouver Island Sea Life

More photos from our trip to Vancouver Island at the end of August.


2009-08 Vancouver Island sea life

We went scuba diving with Ocean Planet Adventures. They're a small outfit but they seem like a good bunch of people. The water was cold for wet suits, around 13c. Remember to bring your thermos of hot water to pour in your wet suit between dives! You can see why everyone switches to dry suits if they're going to be diving much. Despite the cold, it was definitely worth it. I love poking around in tide pools as well, but underwater is a whole other world.

The sea life is very different from tropical coral reefs, but it's just as rich in its own way. It was pretty murky and dark so all the underwater shots are with the flash. It's amazing how much more color stuff has when lit up by the flash. It looks much more drab in the low light.

3 comments:

  1. Lovely pictures. The temperate sea-life seems amazingly colourful. I have seen the Barrier Reef though only snorkelling - SCUBA sadly beyond me now. The Reef had certainly highly coloured fauna.

    There is a lot to be seen locally here in tide pools but nothing so vivid. Fish locally are I believe not highly coloured.

    Ther is an underwater nature trail near here - you can follow it with a snorkel. Haven't seen it though - another effort I must make.

    Current local sea temperature 16C - the Gulf Stream makes British Isles sea warmer than W. coast of N. America. They say temperature changes may switch of Gulf Stream and we shall freeze.

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  2. Cool pics! how the heck do you remember the names of everything!?!

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  3. I don't remember the names, half the time I don't even know them at the time. Sometimes other divers will tell you what they are. Otherwise I look them up afterwards. Sometimes it's pretty tough to identify them. I was trying to figure I what kind of nudibranch it was but there are several similar ones so I gave up. (Search for "nudibranch" on Flickr - there are an amazing variety.)

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