This was the first dive on the second day of diving off Port Hardy (Oct. 21, 2025). UB Diving boat captain Sean was cruising along this coastline near shore and came across a shallow rock just under the surface near a point. He marked "Danger! Rock" on his chart and that became the name of this dive site. It's on the Vancouver Island shoreline in Goletas Channel. This was an "off-slack" dive (while waiting for slack to dive a name brand site in Browning Pass). On the way there we saw a bear on a beach.
We descended down near the rock. Visibility was around 30-40'. The bottom was a mix of rocky reefs and sandy channels. The rocky areas had lots of small and large white plumose anemones on them. The sandy areas had lots of sea pens. I tried to follow my compass North-West towards deeper water, expecting a steep wall, but the topography seemed to be mostly 40-50' deep.
I finally found a sandy chute leading down deeper. I swam down and around to my left and the rock reef dropped down in a wall. I went down to 96', but the wall dropped deeper than that.
I swam around a point on the wall and tried to ascend up shallower, but there was a downwelling current that didn't allow me to swim upwards. I turned around and swam back a bit to where the current was weaker, then ascended back up to the shallower reefs.
I came across a narrow canyon cutting down from the shore only 10 or 15' deep. It was coated with red soft corals on both sides.
After the dive we visited a nearby waterfall and saw lots of humpback whales and some sea otters on our way to the next dive in Browning Pass.
As far as the "B-list", off-slack dives around Port Hardy go, I think this one was pretty good. There was a noticeable lack of fish, but all the plumose anemones, sea pens and those soft corals in the shallows made up for it. It still doesn't compare to the A-list sites in Browning Pass though.
