The Great Crab Grab - 13/03/2014

Twin Piers

Another day and another mission for Laura. this time it was crabs that were to be our quarry - small hermit, shore and velvet swimming crabs. The venue for this was a very tranquil Twin Piers, Loch Long.

As we were preparing the transportation tank before the dive we noticed two rather playful seals popping up and splashing around on the surface. Potentially, this could be a really fun dive.

Entering the water just as it got dark we descended to around 20m, only for me to think that we had missed the reef. However, it would seem that I had just gone a little deeper than usual because of the unusually low tide and so we were just on an unfamiliar part of the seabed. Still, Laura seemed to be having fun collecting crabs in her bag. After a quick detour we finally hit the mark.

Once on the reef we pottered around finding a rather nice pipefish, some large edible crabs a variety of small gobies and wrasse, but no sign of either of the seals that had frolicking on the surface.

As time went on we began our ascent to the surface doing a swimming safety stop. Once on the surface we were shocked that we had been down for 50 minutes (I still had 80 bar left in the tank). Since we'd went in other divers had entered, had a dive and dekitted. Unsurprisingly, my fingers were cold.

Since coming home I've done some calculations and I've achieved my second lowest air consumption ever - 18.9 litres per minute. That's only the second time I've dipped below 19lpm. Happy days!

I never took much by the way of pictures, but below are the two that I liked - a crab eating what looked like a cloaked hermit crab and the pipefish, but they only serve to highlight that I need to either replace my strobe or get a new light for photography as my torch has too focused a beam.

Crab eating crab

Pipefish