Barkley Sound

Barkley Sound teems with life and is home to wolf eels, six gilled sharks, and Giant pacific octopus. It’s pockmarked with pinnacles which provide ledges and crevices for large colonies of anemones and jellyfish to make their homes.

The sound covers 800 square kilometres including hundreds of tiny islands (smaller than two kilometres across.); its waters cover long reefs linking the islands which have caused more than 60 shipwrecks, also an attraction for divers. The most famous wrecks are the VanLeen, which sank in 1972 carrying 300 cars and the Thirpval a navy patrol boat sank in the 30's.

Also called the Emerald Sea, it was rated by Jacques Cousteau as the world's second best dive site.