On Jackie Hildering, The Marine Detective’s Facebook page , there’s a poster for one of her videos captioned “On Canada’s west coast, when you look out at the Pacific, you just see the cold, dark surface…the reason you can’t see to the bottom is because it’s so full of life.”
Nowhere is that so true as in the Campbell River/Quadra Island area where Hildering was just conducting some dives over the weekend with Abyssal Diving Charters. The waters of the Pacific squeeze between Vancouver Island on the Campbell River side and Quadra Island back and forth with the tides in Discovery Passage. The underwater rocks are covered with sea life.
Hildering’s photos from those dives are stunning and show not only the abundance of life under the surface of Discovery Passage but the beauty of it. The colour is amazing! Divers have known this for many years, of course, but how many landlubbers are aware of it?
Take a tour of the underwater world off Campbell River’s doorstep through Hildering’s camera lens.
“Two things particularly distinct around Campbell River/Quadra are the diversity and number of sponges and the astounding expanses of Strawberry Anemones which are not really anemones at all,” Hildering says.
Astounding is the word for it.
Photos in the slide show are courtesy of Jackie Hildering; TheMarineDetective.com.
