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About a week ago my dive buddy Jim Copher plus a few friends and I made the trek to the Port Hardy area of Vancouver Island where we dove in Browning Pass for a few days. Despite some typical dive travel setbacks (such as a flooded video housing, a torn and flooded dry suit, and the occasional bad weather) we still managed to get in some great diving.
There's lots of marine life in the area, and vis was decent. Here's a link to a video short showcasing the diving we did last week at Browning Pass.
""Hanging in trim" is frustrating beyond words if your only option is to use sheer determination to overcome physics." (lowviz)
My dive journal can be read here, and a current dive blog HERE
Okay, you've heard all our opinions. Want to know what the science is? http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/ www.divematrix.com
Browning Pass has been up toward the top of my list of places to dive for a while now....your video just solidified that! Dolphins?!?! How cool is that!!!
Couple questions:
1. Were those typical conditions? Visibility looked very good and the surge appeared pretty minimal. Is fall the best time of the year?
Thanks for the kind words. Now to answer a few questions:
The video was shot with a Sony HC7 pro-sumer grade camera, in a Gates housing. Good optics and lighting are important, so my housing has a Fathom wide angle port, or I use a good closup diopter as well behind a flat port. Also for this little single chip cameara lots of light is the key. I use a mix of up to four lights, either Sunray 1000s and also Big Blue 30x's, all are LED lights. I white balance most every shot while underwater to a white slate, and also use a custom built tripod often. Its all a pain but worth the final results.
Water temp was around 45 degree give or take. Surface weather was on an off rain mid 50s. Typical for september. Vis was around 50 feet give or take when we were there. I've heard it gets better and around 100' vis in early spring, March, April, etc, but the surface weather is much colder. I've been there in August when vis was poor, due to algae blooms. I wont go back there in the summer because of the risk of poorer vis.
There was a swell running and some areas such as Croaker rock we could not dive, so we found other protected spots in Browing pass, out of the swell. The area has heavy tide driven currents, and a good local guide will take you to dive sites mostly based on when and where the water is near slack. Expect lots of wall dives, deep walls if you dare to go that far, in a slight current. Later afternoon early evening dives are also common which turn into a night dive too.
We got lucky with the dolphins. They were feeding on a bait ball of herring.
We were there last March. Water temp was about 43, air temp in the 20s. Viz was generally very good (I'm a Puget Sound diver, so anything over about 20 feet is "very good"). We had no surge and small currents, but surface conditions were sometimes quite rough. We also sat out two days of diving because of hurricane force winds . . .
""Hanging in trim" is frustrating beyond words if your only option is to use sheer determination to overcome physics." (lowviz)
My dive journal can be read here, and a current dive blog HERE
Okay, you've heard all our opinions. Want to know what the science is? http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/ www.divematrix.com
We were there last March. Water temp was about 43, air temp in the 20s. Viz was generally very good (I'm a Puget Sound diver, so anything over about 20 feet is "very good"). We had no surge and small currents, but surface conditions were sometimes quite rough. We also sat out two days of diving because of hurricane force winds . . .
Lucky for me, being a socal diver, I'm quite excited about vis better than 10ish feet. I'm good with water temps down to mid- to high-40's....really don't think I can deal with air temps in the 20's though!!
The one problem I find is that it's hard to convince dive buddies to go on a dive vacation to a place where the water is colder than at home! However, one of my buddies now has family up in the PNW so I might just be able to swing it one of these days.
Thanks for the info (and of course, for the video)!
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Originally Posted by TSandM
