Poseidon's Parlour: From Wrasse-ia with Love

Friday 18 April 2014

From Wrasse-ia with Love - 17/04/2014

Frewbowski, The Zookeeper & The Announcer

Andrea, Laura and myself went to Furness to dive Dogfish Reef, Loch Fyne. Laura (henceforth known as the Zookeeper) hadn't dived the site in years and Andrea (to be known as the Announcer) had never dived here.As for me, I haven't dived there since March 2013 when I set my depth record of 32.8m while doing my PADI Deep Diver Speciality. It was the last bit of PADI training I did.

Tonight was to be a more sedate affair with our plan to go down to around 20m. We had agreed, however, that should we something deeper, but within our depth limits, we'd go down to investigate. :)

Before going in Laura was up to some photographic high jinks. Naturally, I was happy to participate.

The Zookeeper, The Announcer & Frewbowski

We began the dive at low tide which meant a troublesome stagger over the rocky entry. Once everyone had safely entered, we dropped down to 22m. As we swam along I noticed an outline out the corner of my eye. It was slightly gnome-ish. Signalling to the others I dropped down to discover the legendary Dogfish Reef Gnome Garden. Now gnomes divide divers. I quite like them as long as they tastefully placed. This particular 'garden' is a bit haphazard for my tastes, but not everyone has my artistic eye for detail.

Once we'd all taken some snaps we headed off back up the rocky reef to search for sea life. First up was a nice common sunstar, but then the fish started appearing. Schools of pollock, corkwing wrase, ballan wrasse, goldsinny, leopard gobies. In fact, it was the most fish diverse dive I've had in Scottish waters. If it weren't so green and cold in the water I'd have thought I was somewhere tropical.

We maxed out at around 26.5m and had a very pleasant 40+ minutes.