Diving in Browning Pass, British Columbia

Dive Day 1 of the first trip of our British Columbia scuba diving season and we have already done 2 dives in Browning Pass! Browning Wall makes for quite the warmup dive! We boarded our guests in Vancouver yesterday evening and sailed straight up the Inside Passage, past Port Hardy, arriving at Hussar Point, Browning Pass in the late afternoon.

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California Channel Islands Maiden Scuba Diving Voyage

Our guests dove “Octopus Gardens” and “Fishhook” at the south end of San Clemente and the diving conditions were reported as very good. “Fishhook” was especially good, with reportedly interesting terrain, numerous sightings of bat rays, eels and more lobster (“bugs”) than anyone could count.

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Night diving at Socorro and San Benedicto Islands

I often get asked why we don’t offer more night diving at Socorro and San Benedicto Islands (Islas Revillagigedos). Quite frankly, the ever-present silky sharks become overly inquisitive once the sun goes down and switch over into “hunting mode.” Still, I always try to offer at least one snorkelling opportunity after dark.

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Annual Shipyard Refit

Well, today is Day 3 of our annual shipyard refit. We choose to drydock the Nautilus Explorer every spring to spruce things up and continue our quest for continuous improvement. Actually, drydock isn’t quite accurate as that refers to a floating dock that is submerged to the point where a ship can be positioned over the main deck and then the dock’s ballast tanks are pumped out, lifting the ship out of the water. To be technically precise, the Nautilus was slipped on a synchrolift – which is a network of railway tracks with bogies that are towed onto a submersible platform that is then lowered into the water by 16 precisely synchronized electric hoists with the ship then positioned on top of the bogies and the platform then lifted out of the water. The synchrolift that we use at Gran Peninsula shipyard in Ensenada is capable of lifting a 300ft ship! So a 325-ton ship like the Nautilus Explorer is just a little job for them.

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Scooter diver buzzed by a Giant Manta Ray

We’ve been watching one poor old Galapagos shark with a fish hook and leader stuck in his gill plate all season. I’ve become quite certain that Galapagos sharks are resident rather than transient because we see this guy every time we dive Roca Partida. The sad thing is that he has been getting skinnier and skinnier and now looks quite emaciated. The alarming thing is that his behaviour is changing and he is now coming in VERY close to divers. He swam up to me this afternoon and it’s the first time that I had a gut feeling that I had better “watch out” around him. An understandable behaviour I guess if he is sick and starving to death. Damn, I wish there was an easy way to get rid of the illegal longliner fishing boats.

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Leaving a time capsule behind on Clipperton Island

None of us are ever going to forget the 1/2 million booby birds (and their incredibly cute chicks) that we saw, the 5 million bright orange land crabs, the amazing number of moray eels and their bizarre behaviour, the thick “clouds” of black and big-eye jacks, heavy schools of black triggerfish and rainbow runners, the endemic iridescent blue Clipperton angelfish and the coconut groves, white sand beaches and beautiful setting.

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Our last day at Clipperton Island

I literally laid on the white sand bottom at 175 feet watching 12 leather bass (yes, I counted them!) and a school of big eye jacks swarming around me, the bizarre free swimming fine spotted moray eels of Clipperton Island swimming around like fish everywhere I looked, beautiful brilliant blue juvenile endemic Clipperton angelfish darting around and the coral wall sloping up above me with the Nautilus Explorer outlined up above in the beautiful blue water.

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