The dive live-aboard Nautilus Swell travels back in time to an archipelago and culture thousands of years old
Text and Photography by Dale Sanders
across the still water at jagged reefs that skirt the islets all around. It’s a scene you might see elsewhere on the BC coast, but here in the land of the Haida it’s easy to imagine hand-hued war canoes slicing through the early morning calm. My reverie replays an old black and white film clip screened for years at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. It’s from the 1914 Edward Curtis film, Land of the War Canoes, focused on the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) people
of the central coast, not the Haida, but the images are indelible. The canoes approach, masked spirit figures of bear and eagle dance at the bow, paddles drumming cedar, it’s mesmerizing and it’s playing over and again in my head. I hear sounds and realize there’s
some movement aft. Moving to the stern I find some of my shipmates preparing for an early morning exploratory dive so I quickly slip into my drysuit and join them aboard our spacious 38-foot (11.5m) dive skiff
Inde. Diving doesn’t get much easier than this: my gear is already set up and waiting, a full tank of Nitrox my ticket to the show. In minutes we’re at our dive
site, leafy kelp forests, colourful anemones and schools of rockfish almost still in the gentle drift. Lazily, I fin past a wall of white and orange plumose anemones. In this neon circus of a place even the gaudy, like the Red Irish Lord, blends in. A giant pacific octopus is not quite invisible for the pile of discarded
www.divermag.com 33
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68