These first few weeks of September marked my stay in the fairly wild Pacific Northwest.  I started in British Columbia, Canada, where I visited John deBoeck, the owner and operator at the Browning Pass HideAway Dive Resort.

The HideAway is an array of floating cabins tucked into Clam Cove (google Nigei Island to see where it is!), a two hour boat ride from Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. From watching Dall’s porpoises, Bald eagles, and Great Blue herons to hearing wolves at night and watching the moon rise – it really is a spectacular place. The dive sites are all conveniently close and these waters of ripping currents and 15 ft tides harbor very cryptic and incredible life – giant Pacific octopus, warbonnets, seemingly endless carpets of plumose anemones, and on one dive – more nudibranchs than I could ever possibly count.

After my stay in Canada, I headed to Anacortes, Washington where I stayed with Julie Barber (’99 OWUSS NA Rolex Scholar) and Jay Dimond!  Julie is a biologist for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and during my visit to the  office and I learned about how they manage their fisheries as well as helped out with a chinook salmon spawning survey, also affectionately (and kind of morbidly) dubbed a “carcass survey.” Since salmon are semelparous (this means it dies right after reproducing), most of the fish that have spawned are usually dead. Surveying meant a beautiful jet boat ride up the Skagit River and then drifting down with the flow, on constant carcass watch. A beautiful, fun, and quite smelly process.

That weekend, Julie, Jay and I met up with Nate Schwarck, the Diving Safety Officer at Shannon Point Marine Center, to go for a fun dive at the Keystone Jetty on Whidby Island. No better way to end my stay than diving among plumose anemone covered rocks and very sneaky gigantic lingcod!

And now my lovely trek up along the West Coast has come to a stop. Eastward!