A Sunstar pickpocket named Stephanie

It's not every day a Sunstar tries to steal your watch.

China Creek Campground is located on the Alberni Inlet just outside of Port Alberni proper and is home to a dizzying array of underwater fun. Most people don't visit China Creek Campground for the adventures that lie under the waves. 99% of the people there have campers that Gene Simmons would be happy to take on Kiss' final "No This Really Is The Very Last Farewell Tour For Real This Time" tour. These people also have fast boats festooned with more fishing gear than Quint ever had on his Jaws hunting ship, "The Orca."

After learning that The Port Alberni Reef Society had sunk several ships there to create an artificial reef, we were there for scuba diving. The ships themselves had an interesting story. In the summer of 1999, four Chinese ships entered Canadian seas carrying about 600 illegal immigrants—the ships were stopped by the Canadian Coast Guard and eventually seized by the Canadian Government before being sold to the society for $1,000.

Underwater adventure time in China Creek

There are two shore dives here. One is west to the Chinese immigrant ship "Rusty," and one is east to the wall. The original plan was to find "Rusty," but after a couple of failed attempts to locate her in about 70' of water, we abandoned the plan and headed to the wall instead—it's hard to miss a wall.

When I do dives like these, I have a dive flag that I anchor in the general vicinity of where we'll be diving. This flag is mounted on a brightly colour inner tube and flies the internationally recognized DIVER DOWN flag for all to see. This is to let boaters know there are divers in the area and they should not come within 100 yards of said flag.

Sport Fishermen in China Creek are some of the most competitive anglers I've ever witnessed. Before dawn breaks, you can hear hundreds of boats rumble to life. Hundreds. Just as the sun breaks through the trees, the area explodes with the sounds of these boats racing pell-mell out into the world for a relaxing day of fishing. It's like watching the standing start of the Indianapolis 500 if it was at an amusement park filled with rocket-powered bumper boats. It is utter chaos.

I mention this because we first had to swim out and place our dive flag to warn boaters of our presence as we were doing our shore dive. No sooner had I planted the flag than people in speed boats started circling it and dropping their fishing lines in the water—trawling for divers, no doubt.

We made our way over to the wall where not even the stupidest boater would dare take their boat and settled down to enjoy this new dive site. The diver I was with was famous for not being able to equalize, and sucking down air at an astonishing rate, so we needed to keep an eye on their air supply. This dive was only in 40', so we should have a decent amount of bottom time, but we'd also need to factor in getting our dive flag back, not getting hooked by boaters, and adding a five-minute decompression stop to off-gas before breaching the surface.

Making important calls while visiting the wall at 40'

The wall site was stunning, and I really wish I had a camera back then. Sitting on the ocean floor is a phone booth—naturally, I swam over and pretended to make an important call from the bottom of the ocean. I spied with my little eye a pile of crab shells below a seam in the rock wall directly to our east. Swimming over, I flicked on my flashlight and played it into the crack of the wall.

Right at eye level, I came face-to-face with a Giant Pacific Octopus. Its skin turned deep red right before my eyes, and its arms snaked up and out of the crack. It moved like smoke as it turned its mantle so an eyeball could get a good look at me. We held each other's gaze for a minute when I realized I was being rude and turned off my flashlight. The octopus slowly disappeared into its crack in the wall, changing its colour and pattern until it became invisible again. The only sign it was there was a neat pile of empty crab shells. I named him "Dirk."

I got a tap on the shoulder, and my dive partner indicated that they were running low on air and we needed to head back to shore. I looked at their air gauge and was surprised to see how little air they had left. I checked my air and relaxed a bit. I still had enough for both of us if needed.

The insane boat posse that was trawling for divers had left the area, so I made a quick detour to retrieve the flag and came back to meet up with my dive buddy to start our ascent to 15' to do our decompression stop. By the time we got to 15', their air was in the critical zone. Fortunately, we could sit on the bottom, slow our breathing, and relax. I still had 1500 PSI in my tank and had my secondary regulator out and ready just in case.

I watched an enormous Sunstar appear from a small outcropping and start heading my way as we were sitting there. Sunstars are much faster than your average hard starfish, and they are much bigger. This one was bigger than a dinner plate and was now right beside my hand. I was wearing 7mm neoprene dive gloves and watched in awe as the Sunstar covered the fingers of my left hand, then my thumb; I watched in slow motion as this purple giant engulfed my hand and headed for my watch. I named her "Stephanie" and am pretty sure she was about to steal my watch.

My watch. Right. Checking my dive watch, I saw our deco-stop was over, and it was time to head to the surface. I carefully peeled Stephanie off my glove, placed her back in her outcropping, gave her a little fist bump, and said thanks for the fun.

Dragging my gear up the beach and back to our campsite, I took a moment to look back from where we'd just come—you would never know just from looking at the surface how much life and adventure lives under the waves.