Diving Pender Harbour & Environs

Pender Harbour, situated approximately seventy kilometres north of Langdale along the Sunshine Coast Highway is an easy two hour's trip from Horseshoe Bay, Vancouver. Although close to the Vancouver metropolitan area, Pender Harbour is as remote and untouched as any diver would want to experience.

A diving Mecca yet to be discovered by the mainstream, the Pender area offers some of the best diving in the world. Betty Pratt-Johnson, well known diving author, rated the Skookumchuck (Sechelt) Rapids the best dive in British Columbia. This dive is well worth being called the highlight of one's diving career!

Sechelt Rapids are located at Egmont, approximately 30 minutes north by car from Pender Harbour. The closest world class dive near Pender Harbour is Fearney Bluffs. Located two miles north-west of the mouth of the harbour, it offers the most breathtaking 280 foot vertical drop wall. Giant cloud sponges, chimney sponges, octopi, and a colourful medley of anemones, corals, starfish and rockfish - this is the highlight of the day!

Within ten minutes' boat ride of the Bluffs, another excellent site: Charles Island. A steep drop from shore to 150 feet reveals wolf eels, octopus dens and a variety of life comparable to a tropical reef. Going up Agamemnon Channel, just north of Pender Harbour, there are as many completely untouched dive sites as there are places to jump in the water - hundreds! Every little crevice, every rocky outcropping, every little bay and cliff offers new possibilities to observe some of the most varied and colourful marine life in any cold water ocean.

Visibility is generally from fifty to eighty feet, up to 150 feet during the colder periods of the year. During the summer months, visibility may be obscured occasionally by algal blooms, especially in shallow and enclosed waters like bays and near residential areas. The mean temperature below forty feet is always around nine degrees Celsius, summer as well as winter. Near the surface the summer water may exceed twenty degrees, while it rarely drops below seven in the winter.

Although the previously described dives all require a boat and are best undertaken with the help of an experienced guide and skipper, there are numerous shore dive opportunities in the area. Martin Cove on Francis Peninsula offers a safe yet pleasant dive on stormy days. Moon snails, green anemones, purple crabs, blackeye gobies, flounders and sponges below sixty feet. Lee Bay offers a steep, open ravine to the north and a rocky drop and wall towards a little island to the south. You can drive your car almost right to the water's edge, and except for some bolders and logs, entry is easy. This site has potential as a night dive.

From the Pender Harbour area, some excellent and rarely visited dive sites may be reached by boat. Travel time is from fifteen minutes to one hour, depending on the speed of the boat. Cape Cockburn, on the south western tip of Nelson Island, offers a smooth, rolling rock ledge alternately with sandy slopes tumbling to the depths of Malaspina Strait. This is wilderness! Totally isolated from civilization, it is accessible only by boat, and the island is uninhabited at this south western tip. Definitely a nice weather dive.

Across the strait, at Texada Island, two spots are worth mentioning: Anderson Bay and Upwood Point. The bay is quiet and pristine, a gorgeous place even above water. Below, fabulous sponges, millions of fishes and more of that colorful fauna. Upwood Point is a popular fishing spot and for that reason may be dangerous at times. The terrain is steep and life abounds. Don't be surprised to run into a fifteen-pound Chinook. Back towards the coast, the area around Thormanby Island deserves mentioning. Grant Island, with its hydrocorals, gorgonians and king crabs, an abyssal wall where rockfish, ratfish and sculpins mingle among the bull kelp. Access by boat and have a tender watch, protected from boat traffic.

Pirate Rock may be one of the most dramatic spots on the coast. Above water at low tide, it plummets to eternal depths. An underwater Matterhorn, pirate rock is an ecosystem on itself. Every form of life imaginable flourishes among the arches, ledges and bizzarre rock formations. Lots of lost anchors around. Pender Harbour, at the centre of this magnificent diving area, offers guided charters, accommodations, air and excellent all-inclusive packages which provide you with food, lodging, guided boat dives and help with airfills and equipment rentals.

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GROUP TRAVEL