During the summer months, our diving is filled with dives on walls and pinnacles in Resurrection Bay. This is one of our favorites called “Hidden Treasure”. As we approach the Hidden Treasure site, it literally unfolds before your eyes. It is a narrow crack which extends into the side of the mountain face. Only once you get close enough in the boat can you see how far back in it goes, probably 200 linear feet. One of the coolest things about Hidden Treasure is that once you swim into the crack and penetrate about 100 feet, you can surface and look up at 200 feet of sheer cliff extending skyward. At the opening of this wall, a sliver of sky reminds you of the outside world, and the groundwater seeps from the rocks in a perpetual rain. The hollow cavity reverberates as we shout at the top of our lungs in a vain attempt to be heard by the skipper on the boat. If a diver screams in a crevasse and no ones there to hear it, does it still make a sound?
The walls are covered in invertebrate life such as algae, tunicates, sponges, anemones, decorator crabs, hermit crabs, barnacles, bryozoan, nudibranchs, so thick that it’s hard to find a spot where the wall is barren. The “second layer” of life is the crescent gunnels, northern ronquils, rockfish, octopus, sea stars, greenlings, and sculpin which inhabit the ledges and cracks, and lastly the “charismatic mega-fauna” such as Stellar sea lions, and the impetuous divers. The swim in takes about 15 minutes if you take your time and begins at a depth of 80 feet at the entrance, and ends at 15 feet where we surface inside the crack. The swim out is done at the 15 foot depth to assure that we dont do a reverse-profile, and makes for a comfortable 10-minute “safety stop”
I discovered this site while exploring the coastline on my zodiac inflatable raft. I had zoomed past this s
pot dozens of times in the bigger boat, but not until I took the time to “creep” along the shoreline in the raft did she reveal herself to me. Imagine my amazement when I slowly realized that this seemingly minor crack disappeared into the mountainside and was wide enough for me to barely get my 16 ft. zodiac inside her. Without scuba gear, this first trip was but a tease to entice me back armed with compressed gas and a desire to explore beneath the emerald waters.
I would like to hear about your first dive experience at Hidden Treasure! Please feel free to post here!