Exploring the wreck of the Lord Jim

​The data we collected at Ogden Point were quite good and we captured fish on both the hydrophones and the video cameras. As expected, the vessel noise was quite important though. So now we are ready to move on to a new location with different fish species and hopefully less noise.

In my list of potential good places to deploy the XAV array was the wreck of the Lord Jim near Mill Bay. The Lord Jim was an old tugboat that sank accidentally many years ago while on anchor. The wreck of the boat is still there and acts as a nice artificial reef. It is supposedly a nice diving spot with lots of fish. It is also in an area with much less boat traffic than Ogden Point.

Before deploying the array and mobilizing all the diving team, I wanted to make sure that it was a good location. So, I went to check it out with my small inflatable boat and the Trident underwater drone. I was not alone this time. Jean-Baptiste, my brother in law, and Helene, his girlfriend, were visiting us from France, so I took them with me to give them a little taste of beautiful British Columbia. The place was absolutely gorgeous and we found many different species of fish including pile perch, stripped perch, yellowtail rockfish, brown rockfish, copper rockfish and spiny dogfish (i.e. little sharks). Definitely a good spot to deploy the XAV array!