This is a smallish island off the North-West tip of Brethour Island in the Sidney area. I had seen a video taken underwater here by local diver Charles Fox and it showed what looked like an overhanging wall covered with plumose anemones. I wanted to have a look so I came out here on August 1, 2009. Reay Island is a long, narrow island with a series of smaller islets and reefs stretching out from it's Southern tip. I had no idea where the plumose wall was except that it was somewhere along it's Western side. I anchored next to the steep rocks of the reef/islet chain just South of the main Island. I swam down some stair-stepping walls with flat, sandy areas and reefs in between. Visibility was about 20-30 feet. I've never had much luck predicting slack current off the Sidney area. This time I tried to use the Swanson Channel correction, but the current was actually pretty strong. I could just barely swim against it, but it wasn't going to make my tank last any longer. I went down to about 100 feet. The reefs continued down deeper, but I didn't want to push my luck with the current. I only saw a few solitary, closed-up plumose anemones. Most of the rocks were covered with orange colonial tunicates and tiny, white barnacles. I usually see these barnacles in the intertidal zone, but, even 100 feet deep here, I could see their little fan-like feet sweeping for food. It made some of the rocks look fuzzy. There were also lots of feather-like hydroids, giant barnacles, California cucumbers, urchins, sea stars, etc. I saw a couple of "sea lily" vase sponges down deep. There were copper and quillback rockfish, kelp greenlings and small lingcod. I though this dive was half-decent, sort of like a "bigger" Spring Bay with more current and marine life, but I didn't get to see my wall of anemones. I was planning to do a second dive somewhere else on a different island, but I wanted to see more of Reay so I paddled up to a gravel/sand bay on the main part of the island. I swam out again past a shallow area covered with bottom kelp. There were a couple of narrow, ridge-like reefs running parallel to the island with sand between them. I swam up over one of them that was covered with stalked kelp lying flat in the strong current about 30 feet deep. On the other side, the rock dropped down to a field of white. I had found the wall of plumose anemones. At least is was "a" wall of them. I don't know if it was the same one as in the video, but it was pretty amazing anyway. The rocks that weren't covered with anemones were smothered with tunicates, strange pale yellow sponges, staghorn bryozoans and cemented tube worms. Visibility was still about 20-30 feet, but the tube worms were spitting out bits of stuff as usual. There were quillback/copper/yellowtail rockfish, lingcod and kelp greenlings. There was also a school of black rockfish at about 70-80 feet deep. I went down to 80-90 feet deep and could see this life-covered area going down deeper, but my CO2 headache told me to stop messing with the current. I think this part of the island makes for a great dive. It reminds me of Graham's Wall, but with more fish and a greater variety of invertebrates. If I ever figure out the current tables, I'll definitely be back.
