Depending on what year the car was registered, a license plate in Vancouver could either read “Beautiful British Columbia” or “The Best Place On Earth!”.
Not a humble claim to be sure, but not necessarily a false one either.
British Columbia, Canada is objectively beautiful and with all the mountains, lakes, rivers, temperate rainforests and glacial cut seascapes in any direction you turn, it certainly is better than your average place on earth.
Vancouver has all of these within its municipal boundaries! You could easily spend a day hiking a forested mountain, then hit the sea for some diving or windsurfing all in enough time for some delicious dinner of poutine (fries with cheese curds and gravy and enough calories to sustain this lifestyle for days)!
Within the waves, you commonly see harbour porpoises, harbour seals, and California sea lions.
It is not rare to see a pod of resident orcas or grey whales either. Some even come right English Bay and say “hi” to joggers on the Sea Wall or people out kayaking.
Everything you see while diving around Vancouver is giant sized.
From the giant pacific octopus to the giant sea pens, the giant anemones and the king crabs, even the nudibranchs are unmissably big. Things grow slowly in these cold waters, so they grow to old age and huge sizes.
There are kelp forest diving, wreck diving, wall diving... All attainable from the shores near the city. Just drive half an hour up the ridiculously gorgeous Sea to Sky highway and walk right into a sunken underwater jungle-gym at Porteau Cove.
You can then camp there overnight. By boat, there are even more sites to find, as basically the entire Howe Sound is one giant dive site. Boats tend to be pretty respectful of dive flags, but remember to use all precautions when surfacing.
On almost any dive, you will see some rockfish poking around, hooded nudibranchs, crabs, shrimp, sea urchins. Sea stars are making a comeback after their population was nearly devastated from the seastar wasting disease that affected much of the eastern Pacific, so although not in the huge numbers from five years ago, you can start to see them almost every time again. Octopus are relatively easy to spot as are wolf eels. There are Dogfish sharks to be found as well. If you are lucky, you can spot some adorable lumpsuckers whose pectoral fins have evolved into a ventral sucker that suction cups them to seagrass.
However, diving in Vancouver is not for the faint of heart. November through April, a dry suit is almost mandatory, but in the summer months, those with thick blood can use a seriously thick wet suit. The visibility can be low in the spring because all the life starts to bloom, and the low angle of the sun can make a large, powerful torch quite helpful. It takes a lot of preparation and planning, but the dives are said by many to be the best in the world. British Columbian license plates would happily agree.
@ This article above is written by Roya Eshragh (PADI Instructor #373094), please give respect to her copyright!
This article & photos are not to be reproduced or distributed without written permission of Roya Eshragh.
If you wish to know more about dive in Vancouver Island, Canada, here is a video made by The dive outfitters on Vimeo :
Scuba Diving Vancouver Island Canada from The Dive Outfitters on Vimeo.