 Diving at Browning Wall, Tom Ryan photo Winter is the peak season for diving, as the temperate waters provide marvellous visibility. Local operators offer boat charters, lodges, and live-aboard dive vessels, as well as equipment rentals and lessons. Barclay Sound & Clayoquot Sound - Dive in exceptionally clear waters around the beautiful Broken Group Islands
- Explore numerous and easily accessible shipwrecks via Port Alberni, Ucluelet, Bamfield and Tofino — a legacy of the west coast of Vancouver Island's treacherous, rocky coastline.
Brentwood Bay - Experience exceptional wall diving and diverse marine life in this stunning diving area
- View the Glass Sponge Gardens, an immense sea mountain covered with sponges thought to have been extinct since the upper Jurassic period. The largest sponges recorded—up to 3.6m/12 ft across—reside here
- Look for giant Pacific octopus, wolf eels, colourful rockfish, sculpins and huge lingcod, as well as docile, but rare, six-gilled sharks.
Hornby Island - One of BC's many delightful islands, Hornby is home to long, sandy beaches and spectacular diving sites that include the fascinating shipwreck of the SS Alpha, circa 1900
- Be on the lookout for huge, but meek, six-gilled sharks, best viewed mid June and mid September, as well as giant Pacific octopus
- Do drift and wall dives, explore colourful reefs, and watch for sea lions, wolf eels, harbour seals, large lingcod and rockfish.
Nanaimo - Late diving guru Jacques Cousteau considered Nanaimo one of the best cold-water dive sites in the world thanks to abundant marine life and amazing visibility
- Check out the artificial reefs surrounding the sunken ships Cape Breton and the Saskatchewan, formerly of the Canadian navy
- In Departure Bay, explore the 43m/140ft Rivtow Lion deep-sea rescue tug, touted as one of the best wreck-diving training sites in the world.
Chemainus - Take your gear to Thetis Island to explore a 737 jetliner at 20m/66ft below the surface—sunk for the sake of divers' pleasure in January 2006.
Port Hardy & God's Pocket Marine Provincial Park - This is it: one of the pinnacles of diving in BC, with 30m/100ft of visibility and thick, abundant sea life
- Don't miss Browning Wall: this 70m/230ft sheer drop is blanketed with brilliantly coloured sponges, anemones, basket stars, nudibranches, lingcod, Puget Sound king crabs, wolf eels and the famous Pacific octopus.
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