As a scuba diver, I am obsessed with anything that has to do with water and will go to phenomenal lengths to submerge myself in it. Yet, until last April, my husband Joey and I could probably count on a single hand the different locations we have been diving in our home country of Canada. Given my love affair with scuba diving, it should come as no surprise that after countless dives all over the world, I felt an unrelenting urge to start exploring what’s in my own backyard. We dreamed up an ambitious plan – to dive and explore the 13 provinces and territories that make up Canada to discover the beauty and fragility hidden beneath the waterline.

Six months ago, we flew to Saint John to embark on our Canadian Splash journey. Flushing tides, strong and unpredictable current and less than ideal visibility are some choice words that come to mind when I think of the Atlantic ocean in the province of New Brunswick. It’s a disconcerting place for divers. It’s home to the famous Bay of Fundy, where twice a day the largest tides in the world flush in and out moving billions of gallons of water into the bay and then back out to sea. Here, the seawater is dense with silt, plankton, and nutrients, meaning that divers need to be comfortable in an underwater world clouded by hues of green and brown. Although there are a few places along the Fundy shoreline that are considered dive sites, Deer Island captured our hearts. On the southern point of the island, we slipped into an icy world brimming with vibrant invertebrates and other alluring macro life.

After a short ferry ride from the mainland, Joey and I made our way south to one of my favourite Deer Island dive sites – Cancat Beach. When the tide level was just right, we donned our heavy gear and slipped into a cold water world brimming with spunky invertebrates and other alluring macro life. Swimming out from the shoreline, we followed a gradually tapering pebbled seabed. The seabed was dotted with snails and urchins. As we got deeper, a cascading wall decorated with colourful creatures, split from the seabed. Vibrant pink and red anemones ranged in size from being as small as a fingernail to being as big as a dinner plate. The anemones were laced intermittently with other marine life such as sea stars, nudibranchs, urchins and tunicates. In the rocky cracks and crevasses of the Cancat wall, we spied wolffish, crabs, gunnels, and sculpin taking refuge. As I moved my camera lighting over them, they seemed to retreat deeper into the darkness. Peering at the rocky outcrops, I was lucky enough to spot a rolly-polly quarter-sized lumpsucker bashfully perched on a plateau. When I tried to snap a picture, it didn’t swim away, but simply turned away from the camera lens and flashed me his backside.

Following a month of working and diving in New Brunswick, the second stop on our adventure was in the neighbouring province of Nova Scotia. Having lived in the province’s capital city of Halifax for the better part of eight years, Joey and I are well acquainted with the fauna and flora of its plentiful underwater diving spots.