Andi Hagen and Bill McKinnon have each dove the famous mermaid at Saltery Bay Provincial Park over 100 times.
“As dives go, it’s actually quite rudimentary,” said Hagen, “but people come from all over the world to dive and see the statue.”
For the two local divers, the three-metre Emerald Princess still has its draw. “If we went here every day, we would still see something different,” said McKinnon.
Hagen first began diving after he moved to Powell River from Scotland seven years ago. He fell in love with the sport, quickly certifying his way up to dive master and jumping at any opportunity to go underwater.
“I just felt privileged to show people what was down there,” said Hagen. “I’ve taken people from maybe 15 or 20 countries.”
McKinnon’s is a different story. After diving casually through the 90s, he hurt his back in an accident. “I found diving was the best thing for my back,” he said. “Like a therapeutic reset.”
Both are spurred to continue with their more than 100 dives a year because of their pure passion.
“It’s like an entire other dimension,” McKinnon explained. “It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Hagen agreed. “You’re actually flying through the water. It’s like space.”
As Hagen suited up on a picnic table overlooking the dive site, he explained the equipment involved in a dive. First, he said, you need to see and move. A mask, fins, and snorkel do the job. A bouyancy compensator, which can be inflated or deflated, allows a diver to suspend himself horizontally. Led weights strapped to his pack help him sink.
A diver also needs to keep warm. McKinnon uses a wet suit made of neoprene, while Hagen uses a dry suit.
Most importantly, a diver needs to breath. Divers carry containers of air which contain different mixtures of gases. The most common is nitrox, which has a higher proportion of oxygen to nitrogen than normal air. Tanks are attached to a regulator, which allows the diver to breath.
Finally, a watch-like dive computer used as a depth gauge, as well as a gauge that measures air consumption, let the diver know when it’s time to come up.
Mermaid Cove is only one of over 100 unique underwater sites in the Powell River area. After all, it is named the dive capital of Canada.
Underwater wrecks in the region abound. One is the Malahat, a five-masted schooner built in World War I that was used as a rum-runner. In 1946, she was scuttled, and now rests next to the breakwater at Second Beach.
Another is the USS South Dakota, a 150-metre warship built in 1904. Originally a part of the hulks, the ship sank after a storm flooded it in 1961. It now remains on the bottom of the breakwater as a host to sea life.
Speaking of sea life, McKinnon said it flourishes in the region. Wolf eels, sea lions, and giant pacific octopi are regular sightings.
One of the best places to see them, according to him, is the Iron Mines, just past Dinner Rock. “The National Geographic came here and they didn’t want to go anywhere else,” he laughed. Highlights include an abundance of sea lions and two-metre stands of Gregorian coral.
But the plethora of sites has not overshadowed the struggle diving is having in Powell River. In the wake of the closing of the region’s only dive shop, the dive community has battled to stay afloat.
“We still have tourists coming through, and we take them diving, but it’s just ad hoc,” explained Hagen. “We’re just doing it out of the goodness of our hearts to try to keep the spirit of the place going.”
Without a place to refill tanks, one local has stepped up and began to charge a nominal fee for air fills. Often though, this is not enough for tourists who need air right away. The diving community repeatedly steps up to fill the gap, lending tanks and other equipment to visitors who have no shop to rent from.
McKinnon lamented the decline of diving in the area. He remembered a time when a local company used to run two charters a day. Now, he said, work is rare for his small charter business.
It’s a sharp juxtaposition, he said, to the dive capital of Canada that Powell River bills itself as.
The diving community is as passionate as ever though. An over 70-strong Facebook group for the Powell River Dive Club helps locals arrange dives and get equipment.
Hagen and McKinnon dive whenever they have time off.
“It’s like a gateway to another world,” said McKinnon. “There’s so many different layers of learning, I’d be dead before I explored as much as I could.”
