This day of diving can only be described as a day that was meant to be. Monday March 1st was supposed to be a classroom day but because of some scheduling problems it was decided that we would head out to dive. Since we did not find this out until late in the morning our departure from the docks was delayed about an hour.
This delay turned out to be exactly the kind of blind luck we needed because as we made our way to the dive site we saw a pod of killer whales. This was not a common sight here in Campbell River at this time of year and even our instructor didn’t believe his eyes when Rob first spotted them. The pod of killer whales was a sight. I didn’t know whether to snap pictures or just sit and watch. They were huge and majestic. It was a great start to our dive day.
Our dive sight for the day was the HMCS Columbia, which was a decommissioned WWII Canadian Destroyer which was sunk in the 90’s to create an artificial reef. We completed two deep dives on the Columbia and it was spectacular. The dive plan was to first dive down to the tower which stood at around 50 feet to get our bearings. Once on the tower we would proceed down to the deck and move to the bow, at around 90 feet, or the stern, at around 80 feet. Climbing around the Columbia was a lot of fun and I was overcome by a feeling like I was walking on the moon or in a dream. Seeing the turrets of a destroyer underwater and up close was great and I could not help to imagine this turret firing on a German U-Boat in the Atlantic. While moving around the destroyer we kept our eyes open for entry points because our next trip to the HMCS Columbia will be a penetration dive.
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