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Author: Barry Reiss
My buddy Fritz and I lucked out Saturday and did a dive at Onamac (Camano spelled backwards) Point. We were going to meet the rest of our Ski-to-Sea team in Bellingham Saturday evening and wanted to do a dive out of Bellingham or Anacortes during the day. After calling around we learned that we had missed the boats that had left pretty early in the morning. So we decided to dive the Keystone Jetty, but stop at the the Whidbey Island Dive Center first for ideas about other shore dive locations. There was an assistant instructor at the shop who said he was thinking of taking his boat out and offered to take us. He showed up a half hour later with a 15' Zodiac totally customized for diving. A very quiet Honda 50 horse power four stroke motor allowed us to talk at 23 knots without shouting at each other. And electronic gizmos like GPS and vertical and side-scanning sonar allowed us to easily pinpoint the reef. Also on board were a cell phone, VHF and emergency first aid and other equipment.
The dive was a plumose anemone fun forest. I've never seen groves of them like that before. The dive is spread out over a large area and we were at a consistent depth of 50 to 60 feet. There are natural rock reef features, as well as many piled up hollow, hexagonal concrete pillars that must have held up a bridge or some other large structure at one time. Lots of Dungeness Crabs, kelp greenlings, one large and skittish ling cod, sea stars, nudibranchs, shrimp, perch, China Rockfish, and who knows what else hiding in those hollow pillars. The site doesn't get much current and the water temp was a chilly 46 degrees. The first 25 feet of water was pretty soupy because of phytoplankton, but beneath that the vis cleared up to about 20 feet.
Our Navy machinist skipper and dive guide is being transferred (along with his boat) to Guam next month. I will likely be in Guam sometime during the next two years so I will definitely look him up. With more luck I'll get in another great dive off of his Zodiac.
Check out Whidbey Island Dive Center. Good shop, friendly and knowledgeable service, better prices than found in Seattle.
