During a visit with family on Vancouver Island over the Easter weekend, I slipped off for a quick dive with my favourite Victoria dive shop’s sunday drop in dive. Weather, tides and vis conspired against us going to new areas, so we descended to that local standby, Ogden Point. Some may remember an earlier article I wrote about night diving at this location, and this short piece should round it off nicely!

Ogden Point is an imposing stone breakwater and ferry terminal located in Victoria, British Columbia, and a very popular local diving site. While Beyond Deep Diving is my preferred local dive shop, there is a shop located at the breakwater as well. It was mildly overcast as we trooped down the breakwater, with convenient numbered dive flags painted on it, and we entered the water at the second dive marker. The tides were low, and my maximum depth was 13m, were you to dive during a higher tide, you could easily exceed 18m. The bottom is sand with the odd scattered stone and the main show is along the kelp and barnacle studded stone blocks of the breakwater. Visibility was decent, with 4m to 6m being quite clear before particulate haze obscured the rest.

Life at night is great on this dive, and during the day it’s no slouch either! I have never seen so many Lingcod before in a single place. There were also numerous kelp greenlings and rockfish, and their juvenile offspring! Crabs were well represented, as were anemones and several other invertebrates. I snapped away furiously for the entire dive on my camera, switching back and forth out of macro and still/video settings. It’s easy to see why this easy dive location and popular training spot can attract divers back every time! The dive team that went to the third marker had some octopus encounters as well (next time…)!

Ogden Point is a great example of the popular local dive spot. It’s a training spot, a standby location when other places are too poor condition wise to dive, and a unique “wall dive” in of itself. The marine life is varied and interesting, hidden away in the cracks of the breakwater or hiding among the kelp. By any standard it is a basic dive location, suitable for the rawest of new divers, but still offering enough to bring in the more experienced hands. I’ve been there night and day now, and I can’t wait to go again to see what else I can find!

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