Diving in Vancouver - Part II
Posted By Christopher Chin on 25 August 2005
The entire ship is decorated with many plumose anemones (metridium giganteum), orange and white alike, but if you continue aft you’ll find them in such great abundance that the helideck has also been nicknamed “mushroom garden”.
Even the jellies can grow to be enormous in these nutrient rich waters. Twisted around a railing near the wheel house, we found a giant Sea Blubber jelly whose disc was easily larger than a man’s torso.
During our extended surface interval, Divemaster Terry explained that there is an engraved disc/token on each of the wrecks (actually there are two on the Cape Breton) that entitles the finder to a Citizen dive watch courtesy of Citizen Watches and Grassick's Jewelers in Nanaimo. Despite the fact that they are regularly cleaned to prevent overgrowth, the one on the Saskatchewan has eluded thousands of would be treasure hunters for eight years.
The RivTow Lion, the newest artificial reef in Nanaimo, also bore a treasure token until recently. A very pleased Johanna R., who was visiting from Edmonds, Washington, claimed it just last weekend.
HMCS Saskatchewan was sunk in 1997, and lies just a few hundred feet from the former HCMS Cape Breton. We tied up to her radar tower whose present mooring line is unusually thick. As I descended, I couldn’t help but feel like a child whose hand barely makes it all the way around his dad’s finger.
The top of the radar tower is in 45’, which was still a bit hazy as far as visibility was concerned. As I descended past 60 feet, the ship, and its bridge, with which I was nearly level, suddenly went from a blur to a clear image.
The fact that this wreck is several years older is apparent from the lush covering of life. Some of the inhabitants of this wreck were larger as well. Just below the bridge, I came across a gigantic lingcod. Its head was larger than mine, and measured against the door it was blocking before I arrived, its body was in excess of five feet.
The Saskatchewan is extraordinarily diver friendly. With entry and exit holes cut in strategic places throughout the ship, there are very few areas where one is not able to simply follow natural light to an exit. Additionally, spraypainted throughout the ship’s interior are indications of your location, as well as directions to the bow, stern, and nearest exit.
As I swam along the dark central corridor, enjoying the albino fish-eating anemones, my light shone ahead and landed on a swimming crinoid. Its arms undulated majestically to carry its fragile body down the passageway, and I watched in awe as I fully realized that I was in another world. With the dark ship all around me, and nothing but my flashlight illuminating this alien being, I felt as if I were an astronaut hovering weightlessly in space. And then it occurred to me I was in space – Inner Space.
Back on the mainland a few days later, I made arrangements with Kellie, the instructor I dove with the previous weekend, to go out on a “school night” for a night dive. Coincidentally, Ocean Quest is just a few blocks away from the BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology) campus in Burnaby, where my meetings were being held, so I stopped by on Tuesday afternoon and spoke at length with Todd Powell, the manager and Technical Instructor Trainer.
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