Exploratory Dives
Sometimes instead of our usual routes at the dive sites my fellow scuba divers and I take each weekend, we have the opportunity to do some exploratory dives. These are areas we have never been to before but have read or heard reports from other divers that we may see something interesting out there.
Sometimes we do exploratory dives even if we never got any past dive reports but are just curious to see if certain spots are feasible as regular dive sites. For example, Tyler and I did exploratory dives out of Collingwood Harbour and St Vincent Park near Meaford. Greg and I did a dive out of Sunset Point in Collingwood and a private pond near Singhampton. All of these exploratory dives confirmed that these areas were not suitable as regular dive sites for various reasons but at least we did them to finally get assessments of these potential dive sites.
Here are two other recent exploratory dives we did with the first one at Humber Bay West. But instead of the usual peninsula routes, Prash and I went straight out of South Bay to try and find some reported big rock formations. At the 16 minute mark, we came across some interesting rock formations. They were not 15 feet as reported by other divers we know who found them but were about 10 feet. Still, we were not sure if these were suppose to be the rock formations we were suppose to find.
It was a long way out and we could definitely have benefitted if we had scooters so we don’t know if we would make another attempt or not.
Deepest Ontario Shore Dive To Date
On another Saturday, Dean, Greg and I did an exploratory dive at Cedar Hill Park by going beyond the Eiffel Tower which is at 83 feet depth. We wanted to see the Santa Claus that is suppose to be at 100 feet. As we got deeper, things were darker and more quiet in the water. We came upon the Santa Claus which was a lot smaller than I had expected. But just beyond the Santa was a nice size North Pole which we had to touch of course. The depth here at the pole was 110 feet and our dive computers displayed NDL alerts.
In the video below, you can see both the small Santa Claus as well as the North Pole. Our dive computers asked for a five minute safety stop due to the depth we hit.
The North Pole at Cedar Hill Park is the deepest shore dive our group has done in Ontario and in hindsight I wouldn’t do this route all the time there. I would much rather spend our available air by exploring all the other attractions underwater at shallower depths but if we get any divers out at Cedar Hill Park who have never seen the Santa and North Pole before, we’ll accommodate them.
