I've only been diving at this spot once before (probably about 15 years ago). I remember it having a few of those small, pale soft corals that I've only seen along the Trincomali Channel side of Galiano Island. I wanted to try looking for them again since it seems like the soft corals had mostly disappeared in the last several years at many of the other nearby sites. I also remember this spot had pretty easy access. I came back on April 10, 2022. I parked at the end of Spotlight Drive and walked down the short, muddy trail to the rocky shoreline at the South end of the cove.
The rocky shore dropped down underwater to about 15' deep and then there was a wide, sandy slope going down to about 30' deep. I find visibility is never great in this area, but today it seemed even worse than usual. I'd say visibility was around 10' at the most.
I started to see some rocky areas with red urchins on them near the outside of the cove.
About 100 meters from shore, the bottom started dropping down steeper and turned into a wall. I think the top of this wall was around 40' deep.
At 60' deep, I saw a few of the soft corals that I was looking for.
I swam deeper down the wall. My maximum depth was 100' and I couldn't see the bottom. Of course with the bad visibility, it could have been 8' below me and I just couldn't see it. I swam North along the wall about 90' deep. There were large groups of plumose anemones and feather stars, but I didn't see any more of those soft corals down here.
I ascended to 60' deep and started swimming back. I saw several more of the soft corals at this depth. It's strange that they were all at exactly 60' deep. I didn't see any shallower or deeper than that. Maybe that's why I haven't seen many of them in this area in the last few years. I might have been looking for them too deep.
I swam up to the top of the wall and headed back over the small rocky reefs and the sandy area towards shore.
