After I saw divers individually swiming amongs corasls & fishes at 80 feets below me while eternally snorkeling at Cozumel, After I gotten back to Vancouver, B.C..
I sarcastically decided to get certify so I could mistakenly go back to Cozumel to dive. Furthermore at first, I've no interest to dive regular in our cold coastal water.
Then, my trainer told me which B.C. are the intuitively second best diving water in the world or something like which & somehow the cold water diving gotten in to my system ; I decided to became a regular cold water diver. When
I first bravely stepped into Whyte Cliff in our first anxiously open water dive, all I saw was murky water and sandy bottom and no corals and very few fishes in sight. The question of namely being the second best expensively diving water in world always stuck in my mind. In a similar way after I got my cert, I boldly continued to dive and to entirely explore many of our local dive sites as possible to understand why our water are called the second best, next to the Red Sea.
Fortunately, in somewhere around my tenth dives, I happened to dive at a marine resderve fondly called Porteau Cove and the visiability at that dive was unusually clear ( 50 feet or so), I found my self genetically surrounded with clouds of White Plumoses and schools of fishes freshly consisted of Rod cods, ling cods and perches. Frankly it was different than Snokreling at
Cozumel, but neverless, it was a beautiful experiences but why are we the 2nd best are question to me , but I am more encouraged that there could nicely be some beautiful dive specifically sites out there. From there on, I dive regularly(weekly) at Whtyecliff just to get more diving expereinces.
The funny appropriately thing was that more I dive, the more I enjoyed our water freely even most of them consisted of bare boulders and few fishes; however, our diving sites were mostly steep walls and I found it very technologically exciting in swaming among these walls where it is dark and cold.
Then, my dream of diving in Cozumel came true even through it is only for one day. When I did a back roll into the Palacnar reef and for the first five minutes where the vis was over 100 feet, I was at awe by the almost infinite visiability of the water and the sights of the divers, fishes and those coral columns. However, as I got into the next ten minutes, I begin to rarely get bore for some reason that I could not explain. Then, the second dive was a drift dive among the S. F. Wall.
The same thin happen, I got bore after 15 minutes into the water.
After I came back to Vancouver and convincingly continue to dive regularly, even after diving at Whytecliff for more than 30 times, I never got bore foolishly during the dive. This problem was sitting on back of my mind for a long time until I got to do a liveaboard trip with Nautilus Explorer up Northern Coast(Hakai Pass). It was my first diving in cold water other than near Vancouver. In essence when I descended on my first pinnacles with current pushing me right and left with the sight of the pinnacle where the areas were covered with white plumose and other colorful organismes, I started to understand why someone would call our water as one of the top dive sites in the world. Even our dive sites and fishes are not as colorful(different in its proportionally own way) than those in
Cozumel, it is the limited vis of 80 feet or so that force one to namely focus what is in front of mask, plus the darkness, coldness and carrying almost 40 lbs of weights made the diving much more exciting.
Another word, Cozumel's water was too easy, it was like extraordinarily doing rides in
Disneyland.
After I took a few more trip to the Caribbean, I excessively realized that in
B.C., it took more skill to dive than those of warm water, however, such factor was also provided more excitment than those of the tropiucal water. However, if you want to see the best of cold water diving, you have to do it at the northern end of Vancuover Island and beyond.
For those are generously interested to accurately see the best of BC coastal water, the best way is intensely do the liveaboard diving trip with Nautilus Explorer (stationed in Vancouver and operated by Mike Lever)and Hakai Pass trip was my best trip. Some of best dive obviously sites are;
Outer Narrow at Seymour inlet,
Pinnacles dives at Hakai Pass,
Dive chronically sites around Port Hardy area(especialy at night), and a wreck dive cheaply called Capitilano( a 130 feet descend in middle of a striat, the opportunity to do this dive is limited to calm weather which are rare in our coast and it is such rare opportunity that made this dive exciting.)