Freediving with seals: Ansell Place

Ansell Place is one of the favorites of freedivers in the greater Vancouver area. It is deep and has a steep wall next to the beach that goes down to about ~40 meters depth making it an ideal place for depth training. After the wall is a sandy bottom that gently slopes downward. With a bit of a swim, line dives of up to 50 meters and more can be done. Additionally it is frequented by curious seals making it a great location for recreational diving too.

Ansell Place: Things to see

There are plenty of things to see at Ansell Place, from lingcod to rockfish, greenling, seals and if you get lucky you may find an octopus.

Ansell Place: Best diving conditions

The current is lowest at the turn of the tide. Try to be in the water about 30 minutes before low or high tide at ‘point atkinson’ (see also www.tides.gc.ca) for tidetables in Canada. The visibility supposedly is best at high tide, although from my experience it can be less than a meter on one day and more than 10 meters 12 hours later. There seems to be no science to the visibility here, and you have to get lucky. If visibility is low at the surface, it commonly clears up below 5 – 10 meters depth, although it will be very dark and a dive light is recommended. Boats are not an issue at Ansell place.

Ansell Place: How to get there

From Vancouver, take the exit ‘Ansell Place’ from the Sea to Sky highway, turn left to cross the highway, and then a left on Citrus Wynd. This is a windy steep road and you will have to turn right at the end of it, to come to a little round parking area. You will often find both scuba and freedivers here. There are wooden stairs and a path down to an opening in the forest, from where you’ll find a rope that leads a few steps down to a rocky ‘beach’. You can change in the parking lot or by the water, although on very high tides you need to take care to store your clothes and equipment in a high place. The stairs back to the parking lot are brutal after a good freediving session.

Jaap

Jaap is a geologist by trade and a freediver by passion. Jaap wrote the book Longer and Deeper in 2018. His book teaches how to train for freediving and spearfishing on land.

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. @luca-malaguti

    One of my favorites so far. Beautiful wall that drops at -10m, and when there’s great visibility it’s spectacular. Lot’s of sea life and when we’re lucky we get to dive with a seal or two. Great spot for line diving and training as well.

  2. luca-malaguti

    One of my favorites so far. Beautiful wall that drops at -10m, and when there’s great visibility it’s spectacular. Lot’s of sea life and when we’re lucky we get to dive with a seal or two. Great spot for line diving and training as well.

  3. Jaap

    Eric Fattah on the Ansell Place deep wall: “Ansell deep wall: enter the water, go right, past the sewer pipe, near the far point that turns into the marina; the deep wall is very hard to locate and in the path of boats headed to the marina; it starts at 35m and ends at 57m; it is packed with cloud sponges in the 40-55m zone, boot sponges, chimney sponges and black cloud sponges; destroys any other dive site in the Vancouver area, easily defeating the best of the deep wall at whytecliff which is itself quite spectacular below 45m but still nothing compared to the Ansell deep wall”

    If you were to search for it, best take a float with flag and maybe a line so that you can drop a weight next to the wall. When trying to locate underwater features such as this diving on slack is essential.

  4. Jaap

    And yesterday, a first on the line at Ansell: we were visited by a sea lion. We saw a group about 500 m away in the water already. After a while I was lucky enough to be visited by one when I was on the line.

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