This was the first dive of a weekend (Sept. 20-21, 2025) of diving out of Port McNeill on the Sun Fun charter boat. Marg's Wall is in the Plumper Islands group.
The boat tucked into a narrow cut in a small island. This was a shallow, sheltered place to get in the water. We jumped in and swam out towards the wall.
The area around the point was full of basket stars. As we were distracted by the basket stars, a group of sealions paid a couple of visits.
As I swam around the corner onto the wall, the current swept me along it. It was too fast to swim against in most places although there were a couple of vertical cracks in the wall where I could slow down enough to try and take some aimed photos. Most of the time I just snapped away at the wall almost randomly as I flew along. Visibility was about 50'. My maximum depth was 75', which was close to the bottom of the main wall.
As I neared the end of the wall, an upwelling of current pushed me up from 75' deep to 25' deep in a few seconds. My dive computer didn't like that. It dumped me at the entrance to a shallow canyon that was more sheltered from the current. I spent half the dive in this small, 20' deep canyon that was full of colourful anemones.
After a quick stop at another small island for lunch, we spent the next few hours (waiting for the next slack) cruising around the area in the rain watching all the humpback whales that seemed to be in every direction that we looked.
