Dive site review : Active Pass & Area On Saturday April 8 th, my wife Heather and I took the scenic journey out to the Active Pass/Provost Island area to scout dive sites for our new live a board trips. After ten straight days of dive charters, 3 private o/w classes, discover SCUBA for 6 (Kelly did help me with those), 6 specialty certifications and 31 logged dives in the last 13 days, I was ready for a break. We left Van Isle marina with our Fathom Five in tow behind Ward Cartier’s 51 foot “Mystic Quest”, ready for a weekend of relaxation and adventure. Our first job was to sit down with the charts and do some educated guess work, I just started picking out spots that looked good. We planned our tides & times and just started dropping in to these spots one after another not knowing much about the sites. This made for some very interesting dives, it was all new and there were a lot of underwater high fives over the next 6 dives. After all, our only real purpose for doing this was to find “premium” sites with lots of life and various other conditions for our planned 5 dive trip itinerary (an easy check out dive, something wild, a safe close night dive from our base moorage, a deep wall, and a grand finale). Our first dive was a wall just outside our moorage for Mystic Quest, it was protected from current and ranging from 30-80 feet deep with a good range of different life. Presto! Our perfect check out/night dive. We called it “secret wall”, none of the spots we dove had names per say, other than the famous Enterprise reef at active pass, so we took the opportunity to start something. Our second dive was just a few minutes away and again we were happy with what we found. “Aztec Reef”, which we named for its almost perfectly shaped step pyramid look, was covered with large boulders hiding virtually dozens species of fish, large clusters of Plumose, and massive fields of giant Sea Pens on the sandy bottom around 80 feet that went on and on to the edge of visibility. Day 2 - the much anticipated Enterprise reef . The site itself is a little dicey: high current and a lot of boat and ferry traffic. I had my friend and local expert guide, Jeff Wonnenberg, brief me on it before we left. I have never seen a wall that concentrated with plumose before, it was amazing. You could not see the rock itself because the Anemones were so close together. The wall of White was endless stretching up to the 30 foot range and down into blackness far past our 100 foot MOD. They should have named the reef “Isle of white” ... nah, it’s already been done. Our next stop was another unknown wall. Ward and I were both thinking, yeah this kinda cool, until we found a huge cave 30’ high and it tunneled about 50’ into the wall, ended by what looked to me like a monster Octopus den. The den was vacant, now housing a school of coppers (probably a good thing). As we carried on we found cave after cave on this endless wall, it was one of those dives I didn’t want to end, I kept checking my computer hoping somehow it would allow me just a few more minutes, another high five. This one I called “Hole in the wall”.Yeah I know what your thinking, that’s like the most used dive site name in the South Atlantic. Oh well, now we have one that’s just as cool. As we surfaced from yet another unforgettable dive I could see our boat captain (Heather), was starting to get jealous. It only took one dive to relieve her frustration; we finished off the weekend with a dive together on "Aztec", scouting the south side of the reef which turned out as good as the east. Our charter booking dates will be up one the web site soon so keep checking, and do yourself a favor, try this trip at least once. “Breathe continuously” Dan Sidney Dive n Surf |