acrossfromhussarpoint

This was the first dive of the last day (Oct. 22, 2025) of the Port Hardy trip. It was a "filler" off-slack dive while waiting for slack to dive a proper site later in the day. It doesn't have a name on the marine chart, but it's a bit of a bay in Browning Pass across from Hussar Point. There's a dock in this bay, which is supposed to be the site of a potential new dive resort.

Looking down from the boat near the dock, we could see that the bull kelp was covered with hooded nudibranchs. I decided to save them for the end of the dive and I swam down the slope and headed South. The bottom was made up of rubble and small boulders. Eventually, it turned into more of a solid rock reef that dropped down in places like a wall. There seemed to be very little marine life on the rocks. They were mostly covered with small, white barnacles. There were also cup corals and a few fish-eating anemones. Visibility was about 40'. At first I didn't see many fish except for some gobies and a couple of kelp greenlings. Eventually as I went below 60' deep, I started to see a few copper/quillback/black/China rockfish.

My maximum depth was 81', but I could have gone down to probably 100' or so at the bottom of the slope. I saw a school of black rockfish in the distance and hung around with them for a bit.

While I think these off-slack Port Hardy sites are fine for divers visiting from other parts of the world who get excited to see a jellyfish or a sea star, for a B.C. diver they aren't the sites that you travel all the way to Port Hardy and spend lots of money to dive. Personally I think most shore dives around Victoria are better, but if you want to do more than one dive a day off Port Hardy, you have to put up with these sites while waiting for slack to dive the real sites you came up here for.