The weather was favourable for a third dive of the day, so we headed across the crossing to Denman island to dive “Dinner Plate”
Just by the name, it sounded like we should prepare for a little of everything, and that we did!
There were a dozen or so curious sealions that liked to buzz us and follow us around. Definitely more friendly than the earlier dive, but not cuddly like the first dive.
The site has some cool rocks and undercuts teaming with life. Urchins, Anenomes, Rock Fish. Even found a very large Puget Sound King Crab out in the open. After doing some filming on him, I turned back to our group and spotted, under a rock in a dugout, a GPO arm!
I signaled, and we moved in for a closer look. I tried to coax it out with a shiny bolt snap, some tapping and even offering a warm(ish) hand, but it didn’t want to come out. It did however, stick out a small arm to investigate.
In the rubble piles, I also found quite a few larger nudi’s like the Giant Nudibranch, as well as some Lemon Peels in various states of lemon colouring.
It’s also the time of year for Ling Cod to have egg masses with the large males guarding them. We spotted a few with and without the male guards along the dive.
Near the end, the chill was really setting in, and at the last rock we passed, another large GPO was spotted. Some more coaxing, and this one came out for a brief second with a few tentacles. But sadly, the fate was the same as the one before, didn’t want to come out.
With the angle of both of their dens, I didn’t see any eggs, but they certainly could well have been guarding some.
Dive Depth: 12m
Dive Time: 70min