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Those were the first word's of greeting I received from the park ranger as I stepped out of my van at Keystone on a cool, but sunny, Whitby Island morning. Welcome to Washington State. Since I couldn't park, I politely asked the uniformed official if it would be possible to drive over to the beach and double park for a moment while we unloaded our scuba gear. His immediate reply was,

"You're divers? I dive too. No problem with double parking over there by the beach. In fact, double park your vehicles all day." What a change of attitude.

There were seven of us diving at Keystone. It was my first visit to the site. Except for the coolness, it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and fog banks were drifting back and forth across the water. It was one of those rare days when you wished you had remembered to bring your camera.

The dive site at Keystone is a jetty made of large rocks lying in a jumbled pile one on top of the other. They form crevasses and caves, nooks and crannies, where all sorts of fish can swim and hide. There is also a kelp bed which provides safety for lots of small fish which swim in schools around the kelp and rocks. Nearby are the remains of an old pier which provide another nice dive as you meander between the pilings. We decided to dive the jetty first, then dive the pilings in the afternoon.

We made our first dive about 11:30 am, just about high tide. Entering the water we found great visibility. The sun shone down through the crystalline water and sparkled around us. Before entering the water I had been told to look for octopus in the many hiding spots afforded by the jumbled rocks of the jetty, so as we descended and made our way out from shore, I kept my nose to the bottom. With dive light in hand I examined every tiny hole I could find in the rocks. I saw bright red starfish, some strange little crabs about 5 cm across, sea cucumbers, hermit crabs, sunflower stars, shrimp and a beautiful nudibranch whose translucent body was trimmed with bright orange plumes. There were lots of different types of fish. Of course there were ling cod, one of which was as big as my leg! I saw different types of rock fish and one strange type of fish which was shaped like a baseball with fins and a tail. There were lots of them, and so docile you could touch them. Beautiful as always were the pure white plumose anemones. They were everywhere, clinging to the sides and tops of the rocks. And the rocks themselves were beautiful. They were covered with life, predominantly in shades of purple. I am quickly coming to understand that wherever you have strong currents you also get lots of colour, and Keystone has both colour and current.

I saw lots of other beautiful things whose names I don't yet know. One, which I kept seeing throughout the dive, looked like miniature orange bonsai trees, 5 to 8 cm high, rising out of the bottom. In the recesses of my mind I remember reading what these things were, but alas, their name is gone.

For the first third of our dive we were gently nudged toward shore by a weak current. Then, suddenly, the current changed and began to push us forcefully seaward. Our dive had become a rather interesting drift dive. With a little effort we were able to float beside the rocks and continue our search for octopus. Once, not paying attention to what I was doing, I let my feet rise up into the current. Instantly I was pulled up and out and began a slow somersault in the water. There was quite a bit of current if you got away from the protection of the rocks.

We reached the halfway point of our dive and began to swim back towards shore, still looking into the cracks and crevasses of the jetty. All the while I had been in the water I had been studying the small things on the bottom and in the rocks. As we were passing by the kelp bed I looked up at the graceful stalks floating above me and was overwhelmed by the beauty of our surroundings. For the first time in the dive I really looked around me. The scene was lovely. Schools of hundreds or thousands of tiny fish were swimming above me. They were hanging in the kelp bed, or just behind it, perhaps using it for protection. Behind them were the jumbled rocks of the jetty. The sunlight was streaming through the clear water and sparkling off their silver bodies. Larger fish occasionally swam by. After the dive, Krys too remarked about the beauty of that scene. We had been so interested in the micro view, we had forgotten to look at the vista around us. I spent the remainder of the dive looking up, sideways and all around me, focusing on the big picture rather than the small.

Our dive lasted nearly 50 minutes, with a maximum depth of about 55 feet. Then it was time to return to the world of the surface, eat some lunch and warm up. Like other dives I have made here on the west coast, there was so much to see it was hard to see it all. The one thing we did want to see, an octopus, eluded us. Others in our group found them, but not us.

After an hour and a half on the surface, five of us went back in the water for a second dive. The tide was falling and we were warned to be careful of a strong current. Instead of our planned second dive in the pilings, we returned to the jetty. The current made the pilings a dangerous choice.

We waded back into the water and swam out into deeper water. As we slipped beneath the surface we had a surprise. The dropping tide had changed the visibility from very good to terrible. We could see less than ten feet. The water was so full of current borne particles it was like floating in a bowl of cheerios. This dive, the big picture didn't have a chance.

We spent the entire dive with our heads down searching for our elusive prey, the octopus. With a little help from Don we finally found one. Well, we found a piece of one. I am sure he was all there, but all we could see was a small piece of one arm covered with some very large suction cups. He was hidden deep inside a small crack in the rocks. I have seen octopus before, in the Caribbean and in the Florida Keys, but they were always tiny little guys. This thing we saw at Keystone was not a tiny little guy. The suction cups on his arm were the size of a Loonie. I would have loved to see this fellow out in the open. A few minutes later Krys spotted another octopus which was also curled up in a tiny crevasse deep inside the pile of rocks. We could see a little more of this one, but still, only a part of an arm. He, or she, was just as big as the first one.

Our second dive lasted only half an hour. All of us were a little cool and the visibility was terrible. I don't mind being cold if I have a lot to look at, but when you have to strain to make out your buddy, it just isn't a lot of fun.

I loved my introduction to Keystone. There is so much to see. And I learned a big lesson. Always remember to look around once in a while. Sometimes the big picture is even prettier than the close-up.
 

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