finlaysonarmrock3

I anchored my boat near the shoreline across from the small, exposed rock. At the surface here, under the shade of the steep shore, visibility was a sort-of ok 8-10'. As I swam out towards the rock, the visibility quickly dropped to only 3' or so. I descended near the South end of the rock and started swimming down along the rocky bottom. The visibility was so bad I had to swim with a hand out in front of me to stop me from bumping into the rocks. By the time I reached 30' deep, it was almost completely dark and I was thinking of quitting the dive. I don't know why I keep trying to dive in Finlayson Arm in the early Fall. Most of the time when I've come to this area in September, there is a red plankton bloom that makes the visibility about as bad as it gets and basically undiveable. Today I was optimistically assuming that since September was over, the visibility would be magical. In the future, I have to try and remember to avoid Finlayson Arm in Sept. and Oct. I stubbornly kept descending and the visibility started to get better at 45' deep. Eventually, it was 20-30', but dark like a night dive. My maximum depth was 120'. I followed the base of a large rocky area that bulged out from the South side of the islet. This rocky area is visible on the sidescan image. During my 2009 dive here I described seeing a surprising amount of tiger rockfish (7 or 8). Today I didn't see any, just a few copper and quillback rockfish. Back then, I also noticed an unusual amount of cup corals, but today I only saw a few in just one small area. In 2009, I also saw several boot sponges below 100', but today I didn't see a single one. I did see 2 feather stars today. Years ago, I would have not expected to see them in Saanich Inlet, let alone this far South.