I am always up for trying 2 or 3 exploratory new dives on a trip if our guests are “up” for it. The folks on this trip are terrific sports and up for exploratory diving. We lucked out today with the discovery of a beautiful, albeit current-sensitive, pinnacle loaded with invertebrate life including corals, sponges and anemones as well as a giant pacific octopus and wolf eels.
Read MoreThe idea is that the floor will be completely clear and see-through (hence the see-through great white shark cage) and the divers will feel like there is nothing between their feet and the ocean bottom 250 feet below. Nothing that is, except for 17 foot long great white sharks swimming around below the cages.
Read MoreThe difficulty is that island is at the entrance to Chatham Sound and the dive conditions can be quite challenging. I’m only able to offer a dive there maybe 1/2 the time due to surge, current, sea fog or high winds. Challenging?? YES. Worth it?? ABSOLUTELY according to everyone that has splashed there.
Read MoreThere are a lot of sea lions around Inian Island and while we are used to having them interact with divers, the interaction has been different this year ie. more animals, groups of sea lions visiting divers are larger, the sea lions are coming in closer than before and there is a lot more mouthing behaviour going on than usual.
Read MoreOur poor guests – some folks were on the port side of the ship watching the bears (which got especially interesting when the grizzlies spotted something further down the beach and got up on their hind legs to get a better view) while other guests were on the starboard side watching the fantastic humpback whale action. And some poor guests were running back and forth to both sides of the boat trying to watch everything at once!!
Read MoreThere is a large population of stellar sea lions around Inian Island that are always interested in scuba divers and the Nautilus Explorer – to the point that they hang around between dives and sometimes come half out of the water to try and look in the portholes of the ship! Fish life is great. Humpback whales and sea otters swim back and forth past the boat all day long. The scenery is absolutely spectacular although that is a pretty lame description compared to the reality of the vista across the strait. It would be more accurate to describe the mountains to the north as imagining what it would look like if a scaled down version of the Himalayas extended to the water’s edge!! There are even rumours of salmon sharks (ie. imagine a 10 foot scaled down version of a great white shark) in the area and you can bet that we are keeping our eyes open for those guys. It’s an amazing place and unquestionably worth diving and continuing our explorations.
Read MoreAnyways, we saw one young adult today who defied any description of humpback whale behaviour that I have ever observed. Bob (which is what we named this guy) was hanging out with stellar sea lions instead of other humpback whales. Not only was Bob hanging out and interacting with 10-20 sea lions at a time, but he also seemed to be mimicking their behaviour. Twisting and turning on the surface and throwing himself from side to side. Bob was even doing barrel rolls and swimming along on his back. Even more oddly, Bob approached the Nautilus Explorer a couple of times with his head out of the water – just like a sea lion. All I can say is that never before have I seen a humpback whale that so clearly wanted to be a sea lion.
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