I wanted to do a shore dive on the drive home from a Port Hardy dive trip so I stopped here on Oct. 23, 2025. If you drive through Sayward and go to the end of the road, you reach Kelsey Bay. There were 2 areas I wanted to dive here. The first was under the public dock. The second was the rocky point just past the dock. In Betty Pratt-Johnson's diving guide book 99 Dives, she calls this point "Ferch Point". I've never seen this name on a map or marine chart, but she must have called it that for a reason so I'll call it that too.
In Sayward, there was a big herd of elk in a field next to the highway.
I parked near the dock and climbed down the rocks to the water.
I swam down the rocks. There was a bit of bull kelp and some perch. The riprap boulders ended in a sandy bottom about 30' deep. I was diving just before slack according to the Johnstone Strait Central current table and I didn't feel much current. Visibility was about 30-40', but it was pretty dark since it was pouring rain on the surface.
I reached the dock and swam under it. Depths here were about 30-40'. Most of the pilings were pretty bare, but some random ones were covered with plumose anemones. There were also several crimson anemones. There were a few sea pens in the sand. There was the expected old unrecognizable rusted metal debris on the bottom and lots of broken dishes.
I swam out the other end of the dock and continued swimming about 30' deep across the sand towards Ferch Point. I soon saw the rocky area sloping down from the point.
As I continued along the rocks, the rocky rubble turned into a more solid rock reef dropping down like a wall. This section of wall was 35' deep at its base. In the book 99 Dives, Betty Pratt-Johnson mentions "Cloud sponges are beneath the overhangs at only 25' deep. Large sponges at 40 feet". This was almost exactly what I saw here today, except the cloud sponges were all dead except for one small one. I saw the brown remains of dead cloud sponges (and a few small boot sponges) under a small overhang at 35' deep. I even saw small dead cloud sponges under the overhangs of small boulders. I don't know how long it takes dead cloud sponges to disintegrate, but I assume these ones all died relatively recently. At 45' deep, there were a few larger dead cloud sponges. Almost all the cloud sponges had either a grunt sculpin, a sailfin sculpin or a decorated warbonnet living in them. My macro camera's strobe decided not to fire temporarily, so I was stuck taking photos of these fish using my flashlight. My maximum depth was 65'. Apart from the strangely-shallow sponges, the rocks seemed pretty bare, although there were some patches of zoanthids. As I swam farther around the point, I could feel a current flowing away from my entry point and I didn't know how much stronger it would get so I turned around and started swimming back.
I returned back across the sand to the dock. It was very dark under it, so I tried taking a few long-exposure photos using a tripod to try and get a better view of what it was like under there.
I don't think this is a site worth driving all the way up from Victoria to dive, but if you live nearby or are passing through, it's worth diving here. The dock pilings and the unusually shallow sponges at Ferch Point make this an interesting spot. I'll probably stop here again next time I'm on a North Island dive trip. Considering that Campbell River divers only have access to a couple of shore dives in their town, Kelsey Bay might be a reasonable shore dive location for a day trip.
