Emerald Sea Photography
Fulton
Reef is one of Hood Canal’s best dive sites and this
mysterious gem is virtually unknown to the local dive
community. A chance comment by Don Coleman (Pacific
Adventure) to run my side scan unit down by Fulton Creek
to look for structure had us chomping at the bit to dive
this site. We had spotted quite a bit of rock
structure and a wall on while running the side scan near the
creek. We planned a return trip to the Canal to dive
the site and we were not disappointed.
The reef itself starts in about 65 feet of water, with lots
of slanted, fractured rock structure and schooling black
rockfish. Cruising over the top of the reef, the
bottom drops into the abyss and you’ll find a nice vertical
wall that ends at about 95 feet of depth. Along the
wall, there are lots of large rocks, cracks, nooks and
crannies that are just loaded with critters to admire.
On our first dive at the site, we spotted several friendly
grunt sculpins, dozens of hairy crabs, nudibranchs galore
and huge lings guarding their eggs. The
highlight of the dive was a big octopus slowly fanning her
egg clusters with the water from her siphon. We
watched mesmerized for several minutes as the eggs slowly
waved back and forth as she kept them clean and oxygenated.
Further
up the wall, a juvenile wolf eel peered out at us, wondering
just what the heck these noisy, bubble-blowing creatures
were. We spent nearly 45 minutes exploring Fulton
Reef, finding several cavern-like structures along the wall
and lots of octopus dens. The base of wall is home to
a nice rubble field where you’ll be happy to spot a large
number of pregnant rockfish.
On our way back to the boat, we were entertained with a wide
variety of nudibranchs crawling around in the mud flats as
well as a few sea cucumbers standing straight up and
spawning into the still waters. We explored this site
during the middle of a moderately large flood tide and
experienced no current at all until we were in the top 15
feet of water on our ascent back to the boat.
If you’d like to see this amazing dive site for yourself,
book a charter on
Pacific Adventure and ask Don to take you to Fulton
Reef. He doesn’t visit the site very often, but for me
it’s one of the top three dive sites in Hood Canal and well
worth a visit or two.