Cold-water diving

The World
We're looking for the name of a large island in the Pacific northwest. The Queen Charlotte Strait separates this 300-mile long island from mainland British Columbia. At the northern end of the island is God's Pocket Marine Provincial Park. Scuba divers flock there as the cold-water diving season gets underway. You can see colorful Nudibranchs, rockfish, and the occasional Giant Pacific Octopus but for that you need a good supply of oxygen. "I'm pumping these scuba tanks up to a pressure of 2800 psi and then I'm going to close the valves and release the pressure so that I can undo from the tank, that gives them a full tank for a good dive." The answer is British Colombia's Vancouver Island, which has some of the best cold water scuba diving in the world. Producer Ari Daniel Shapiro recently visited a diving resort just off Vancouver Island and sent us an audio postcard.
Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.