How To Navigate Humber Bay West Dive Sites

I’ve done pretty well all the main dive site routes at Humber Bay West so I’ll try to give an overview on how to navigate them here. I’ll use different maps as well as describe the usual routes that I do when I’m down there. When you arrive at the main parking lot where the vast majority of scuba divers park at, you will see the training area on the left side with four plastic jugs in the water. This is the dive training area where dive schools conduct their open water training dives so we’ll start here with a brief description along with an old map of it below.

Ignore the colours in the above map but the four plastic jugs are arranged in a square with the two towards the top of the map are where there are two platforms in the water for training. These are also the plastic jugs which are furthest from the beach. The platform on the left is at around 15 to 17 feet deep while the one on the right is at around 20 feet so the entire training area is not very deep. There are lines that connect all four corners of this square.

I would suggest that divers do not use the line on the side closest to the peninsula because it gets very shallow here at only about 7 feet. So unless you are hanging onto the line itself, you will probably end up at the surface. So if you want to go all the way around the square, you will likely have to pull yourself down during this shallow section.

Many divers start their dives from this training area and go out further as the platform on the right (currently marked with an additional red ball next to the jug at the surface) has another line that extends around the entire peninsula. However. I usually like to start Humber Bay dives from the other beach on the right side of the parking lot and end up at the training peninsula as it’s easier to find the wreck from that direction. So when divers are coming from that direction and they see the first platform which will be the top right one, depths will start to get shallower and it’s a good point of the dive to release some air from your BCD.

When you get to the other platform, you can do your safety stop right there since it’s already at 15 feet or just take a rolling safety stop in the NW direction (but more towards W at about 300 degrees) to the beach. The water temperature here in the training area is usually a bit warmer too.

The platform on the left now also has a line running further to the left which is actually north and it goes to a third platform that is held down on the bottom with rocks. This line curves back towards the beach but doesn’t go all the way. This line is depicted on the fuller map below so divers can venture out this way to extend their dives a bit. When I was there, I spotted two superhero mannequins along this line.

Usual Dive Routes Our Group Likes To Take

From the fuller map above, the main parking lot for divers is at the smaller peninsula towards the top of the map. You can also see the outline of the training area lines that make up the little square. As mentioned above, our group now likes to start our dives from the beach at the right side of the parking lot. The yellow circle off this beach is another platform where there is a main thick line that runs from here all the way around the peninsula back to the training area.

This main line and platform at this right side of the peninsula can usually be found even in bad visibility if you head E (east) from where you descend which is about a 45 degree angle towards the rocks of the peninsula.

What I usually do is from this platform, there is a thinner line not really shown in the map that leads to the wreck with the skeletons represented by the blue circle in the map. This is how our group divers who know this site well are getting to the wreck. This is the top side of the wreck which is beside three concrete tubes shown by the three small blue rectangles in the map just above where the wreck is marked and yes you can go through these tubes if you want.

This wreck is actually connected to a separate bottom part of the same wreck that lies parallel about a room’s length away and is connected by a thick line that starts from the stern of the top section of the wreck. This is shown by the thick dark line going down from the blue circle. As you move down this thick line, you will see a small section that runs off it to the left as shown in the map. This is where the bottom wooden section of the wreck is but is not the only connecting line. There is also a steel chain that connects the bow of the top section to the bottom section of the wreck but is not shown on the map. You can use either one as they are very close to each other when moving from one section of the wreck to the other.

As you can see from the map, the thick line runs right across the bay and another way to get to the wreck is if divers start at the same beach and head straight out to intersect with this main line, turning left on it will bring you to the wreck as well. This is how I use to find the wreck before the thin line from the platform was laid down.

Closest Tank Fills:
Aquarius Dive Center,
Scuba 2000.
Aquasub Scuba,
Dive Source,