Poseidon's Parlour: Santa Catherine, Costa del Fyne

Sunday 20 April 2014

Santa Catherine, Costa del Fyne - 20/04/2014

Mr Fallsoveralot

Today I went with Mr Fallsoveralot to St Catherine's for a couple dives. However, the sun came out and it's safe to say that it felt more like Spain than Argyll. Upon arrival at the site there were some other divers kitting up and a couple already coming out of the water. The buddy pair coming out turned out to be friends from my local ScotSAC club - Marion and Campbell.

After some chat, with Grant celebrating his 20th dive I suggested that he lead me down to the reef, with me providing backup in the event he got a bit lost. Once on the reef the critter hunt began in earnest. I went to a known conger spot with no luck, but then I started spotting some nice creatures:

a large red cushion star
a predating sea scorpion
a butterfish
various wrasse/goby

In the end we were down for about 40 mins and max'ed out around 26m.

Back on the surface some more chat and some sandwiches in the sun set us up nicely for the second dive. Entering the water we took some tips from Campbell and Marion on where to find a nice big conger eel for Grant. Clearly overwhelmed by this information Grant proceeded to live up to his nickname and fell over. Injury free, we headed back down to the reef and found the conger eel. We waited around to see if it could be lured out - it couldn't be tempted.

Moving up the reef we stumbled across some nice life - pipefish, edible crabs and the usual variety of critters. For me, nothing topped the beautiful cushion star. :) I was a happy echinoderm enthusiast.