The Long Walk to Freedom - 29/05/2014

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” ― Nelson Mandela

Tonight The Zookeeper, K-Pep and myself dived Furnace Quarry, Loch Fyne. I'd never dived it before, but I had dived the neighbouring site Dogfish Reef. The Quarry has a similar underwater topography - essentially a steep giant boulder slope dropping down into the abyss well beyond 40m.

We entered the water after battling though a cloud of midgies, so diving into the water was a considerable relief! Before entering I had realised I'd left my computer at home, fortunately K-Pep carries a spare Aladdin 3G which he let me use.

K-Pep, a veteran of over 1,500 dives when he stopped logging, led us down to 25m where we encountered the usual variety of Loch Fyne life. As we began working our way back up the reef we started to encounter some stunning deeplet anemones which I identified thanks to this handy ScotSAC guide.

Moving back into shallower waters the Zookeeper spotted a number of large edible crabs dangerously entangled in discarded fishing line. I think it would be great to take fisherman under the water to show them the damage their pastime has on the environment. Regardless, we drew our knives and set to work. I cut the long lines, in part to ensure that neither of my buddies became entangled leaving them to touch the crabs. I'm not a huge fan of anything with that many legs, so the role of documentary film-maker suited me fine.

At one point, Laura let the largest crab go and it fell lifelessly to a rock. I feared the worst, but then it slowly came too realising it was free and proceeded to do what edible crabs do best - find a hole to sit in. In my head, I had the chorus of "Born Free" buzzing away. I think this has been the first time that I've felt like an environmental/animal rights activist.

Continuing on we started to encounter some large ballan wrasse - the probable targets of the fishermen. However, if you think they are hard to catch on a line, try catching them on camera. They led me a very merry dance indeed!

Then, after 67, minutes it was time to get out the water and head home. En route home I stopped in, to my eternal regret, at Mr Pia's Fish 'n' Chips in Inverary for a bag of chips. *BOAKS*

Deeplet anemone

Lobster

Deeplet anemone

Battling to save crabs

Ballan wrasse

The Zookeeper

Route 66 - 26/05/2014

Tonight myself, the Zookeeper and Fast Ed had decided to dive from Conger Alley all the way down the road to the entry point for Twin Piers in Loch Long. It was a brilliant night for diving -  flat calm sea, the tide was out and was returning in the direction we were heading.

We parked the cars at Twin Piers and kitted up before walking the 400m to Conger Alley.

We dived down to the reef, maxing out at a reasonable 22m, and began working our way up the reef.

As regular reader will know, I dived this site three times back in January. Each time was quite a different experience but it has always provided either seal or conger eel encounters with other smaller critters for company. Today I was hoping to see an octopus. Laura had spotted and pointed one out to me on a previous dive, but I hadn't seen one before and between the rocks couldn't even figure out what I was meant to be looking at.

Our first encounter was a relatively shy conger eel who was not prepared to be coaxed out. We spent a fair bit of time trying and at 22m this meant that I was using more air than I was planning to at this depth. 

As we worked our way up the reef it was then my turn to spot something. At first I thought it was a large cuttlefish, then it dawned on me what I was looking for. I signalled Laura and as I looked back it had darted back into a crack between the rocks. There was no doubt I had just spotted a curled or lesser octopus.

Continuing on we found a second, larger conger eel that was also far more active in its hole.The Zookeeper gave me a horse mussel, which I presumed was for sacrificial purposes. I sliced it open with my Scubapro Mako and tossed it towards the conger hole. The conger obviously appreciated the 'amuse bouche' because it was sucked in without a second thought.

We then continued up and off the reef to towards Twin Piers. My air had been heavily depleted. I already had serious doubts about making it the 400m. Still the tide was with us, and even if we failed the surface swim would be a laugh. Ed naturally had bucket loads of air and the Zookeeper wouldn't be too far behind me. 

At one point I signalled to Ed to say I only had 40 bar and he signalled back with two fingers. I was sure he'd have more than 20 bar. Afterall, he dives on a 300 psi 12 litre tank as opposed to the 232 that I use.

In the end, I surfaced with a hefty 10 bar after 66 minutes. We were still 200m away from the piers, but the sun was out - as was a rainbow - and it was time for a carry-on as we completed the route. Then the blog title came to me, Route 66. Now, haven't I heard that somewhere before?

Shy Conger

Curled Octopus hidden between the crack

Bloody Henry

Goldsinny

Alien Facehugger

Laura says hello

How far we came

Discovering Boulder Beach - 25/05/2014

On a previous trip to Loch Fyne I had noticed small peninsula and a place to park by the road. I pointed it out to Laura and suggested we return to explore the site. Once home, I did some research to see if I could find information about the site. I found nothing, not a thing. The site, described by us as Boulder Beach, shall remain secret right now - that said it's probably been dived hundreds of times.

The Zookeeper and I headed at a 90 degree angle to the shore and immediately swam straight down beyond 20m. On the way down we encountered our first dogfish of the day. We then turned 90 degrees to the left. The topography was somewhat dull seabed, but there was plenty of life. As we turned again to go up to 15m  I spotted the tail of a ray, which turned out to be a cuckoo ray -  not a thornback ray as we thought. (Thanks to Andrew Sinclair for the insight).

Swimming back at 15m we completed a square, but continued past out entry point in order to dive an angled figure of 8. Just as well, as we encountered some of the most interesting topography and a sea mouse!

This was a decent dive with an extraordinary encounter with a beautiful ray. We'll be back at this site for more exploration.

Sea Cucumber

Cuckoo Ray

Sea Mouse

Scallop

The Zookeeper on Safety Stop

A Midge Too Far - 22/05/2014

brutal ˈbruːt(ə)l/ adjective: savagely violent.

People often talk about 'the brutality of war'. I don't want to offend anyone or trivialise the concept, but yesterday's dive was brutal. Not because of the cold, the visibility, the depth or a strong current. Nope, none of these things. It was an enemy far more insidious. An enemy who lured us out before attempting to destroy us. I'm talking, of course, of the Highland Midge.

Midgies as we call them locally, are voracious little predators who last night were swarming in their thousands. Kitting up at Anchor Point, Loch Fyne was so unpleasant I did everything with my hood and gloves on just to minimise their opportunity to feast on my tasty blood.

Laura had to kit up twice because of a hose issue, so while it was rectified I swam out into the loch and waited for her to return with the correct gear - it was horrific. I genuinely felt sorry for her having to spend more time than was necessary on the shore.

To the dive then, well as Anchor Point is a fair bit further away from Glasgow we had agreed we'd do one long dive with the possibility of a second on the way home (the midgies put pay to that idea). As you know if you are a regular reader, I've dived here before. Last time was a bit rubbish, although a fun day. Today the visibility was only slightly better ranging from 2-4 metres at different points.

We headed out on a heading of 320 degrees until we hit our desired depth of 23m and began to work our way back and forward along the reef. Interesting life was at a premium. A few goldsinny, a flatfish, the odd scallop, crabs, squat lobsters. From our perspective it wasn't great, although the underwater topography was quite interesting.

We knew exiting the water was going to be grim. I dekitted and packed up the car in my drysuit, hood, gloves and mask. Only whipping them off at the last moment, before diving into the car and speeding off with the windows down in an attempt to suck the midgies out the car. It worked.

Knowing that the Mermaid of Dundonald (Avril) was heading to St Cats with K-Pep her dive buddy, we stopped there for five minutes to see if we could meet them. They hadn't arrived yet.

As we drove the rest of the way home I saw a brown flash in the distance. It was Avril. We stopped on the road (it's not a busy road) chatted for a bit, warned them of their pending doom and then sped off back to civilisation.

If you want to learn more about midgies or work out if they are going to bad or not. You can use the Midge Forecast website (midgeforecast.co.uk) - it's not entirely accurate however.

Burrowing common star

Bloody Henry

Partial Urchin Eclipse

Camo Crab

Sea squirt illuminated

Going Deeper - 18/05/2014

Having been away with work I haven't been diving in about 10 days. Meanwhile my pals have been diving in various locations an have been very smug about it on social media websites.

Today was my first chance to get wet. Myself and Mr Fallsoveralot were meeting at Aquatron before potentially heading to the Caves. While at the shop, in walked Fast Ed who happened to have his kit in the boot of his car. A few smooth words of seduction and he was willing to abandon his wife for the afternoon to join us. :)

So we headed up to the Caves only to find the small stream in full flow and visibility likely to be poor. We therefore headed further down the road to the A-Frames to do a dive that would break his depth record, but stay within the limits of his training (30m).

Leading the dive out in poor visibility my plan had been to dive to the big frame, then head down past the deep frame before turning back once we reached our desired depth. In the poor visibility however and fairly swift current I missed it. Instead, we ended up overshooting and heading down to around 29m  before turning back and hitting the deep frame and what I normally call frame 2.

The depth and different route meant we encountered plenty of sea cucumbers, peacock worms, a firework anemone and a decent array of fish and crabs. Sadly, Ed also spotted fishing lure, and I found a plastic bag (floating at 20m) from East Dunbartonshire Council ironically promoting greener more sustainable behaviour

In total it was 45 minutes and by the time we surfaced the rain and poor vis was enough to dampen our enthusiasm for another dive. However, Grant recorded a whopping 29.2m on his computer - smashing his depth record.

Peacock worm

Pink spotted sea cucumber

East Dunbartonshire logo

Clean environment

Peacock worm

Hermit crab, dead man's finger and sea squirt

Buried edible crab

An Unexpected Journey Part 2 - 08/05/2014

I'm assuming you read Part 1, so I'll just continue with the narrative....

We came ashore high as kites because, regardless of what people think, we had just enjoyed an excellent little adventure. With Fast Ed set to continue our adventure, we prepared to dive the regular St Catherine's dive site. We entered the water determined to find some Conger Eels.

Dropping down to around 20m we stumbled across a lovely red cushion star before finding a large but shy conger eel. However, the dive highlight for the Zookeeper and Fast Ed was a spooked catshark that swam straight at my face. Naturally, I jumped. Even underwater I could hear Ed and Laura laughing. I felt like Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss' character from Jaws) when he finds the remains on the Orca.

Matt Hooper - The reason why most of us dive

Then came the edible crabs. A couple of them roaming freely over the reef. I've never seen that before. The carry-on continued as Ed unleashed his true inner self as he wrapped a length of seaweed round his neck like a Eurovision-esque feather boa - it seemed appropriate.

Edible crab

Jaws

Comb Jelly

Cushion star

Conger eel

Cushion star

An Unexpected Journey Part 1 - 08/05/2014

As regular readers will know, on a previous outing Laura and I scouted out the access to the lesser dived part of St Catherines, Loch Fyne. However, St Catherine's 3 - Bottle Bank is also a much contested site between divers and local residents who rightly have concerns about a minority of divers who persist with antisocial behaviour.

Laura and I had planned to dive the site, but chance comments by Martin and Ben in Aquatron made us wonder if we could keep all camps happy by diving the length of the shore between St Catherine's 2 & 3.St Catherine's 2 being the less contested site that features regularly on this blog.

Our new plan was to build up kit at St Cats 2, drive along the lane to the St Cats 3 entry, I'd drive back to St Cats 2 before walking the 500m back to the kit and Laura. We would then enter the water, dive the reef before heading as far along the shore as our air would safely allow. Still following?

Specifically, we were going in diving to 20m heading NE to the reef, working our way up the reef to 10m, where we would leave the reef and head NE to our distant exit point. At 80 bar we'd start to ascend to 5m and at 40 bar we'd surface.

Our Plan

The plan was set and it appeared as though it had appeased Poseidon himself as a pod of porpoise and a seal frolicked offshore and the tide flowed in our favour.

As we dived we encountered catshark after catshark - I mean loads of them. The dive came alive in a fun way when Laura who was feeling a bit floaty in her new undersuit grabbed what has now become known as her "Gandalf stick". Feeling a bit left out I too grabbed a piece of driftwood and continued our Unexpected Journey.

We almost made it too. We came up about 50m short of the target only to see Fast Ed cruising the lane in his car looking for us or perhaps something more sinister - you never can tell with that boy. We signalled with torches and we chatted from afar as the tide gently swept us to our destination. 

Butterfish

The Gandalf Stick

Catshark

Nudibranch

The distance travelled

A last Gasp Dive - 07/05/2014

Late in the day, while I was still at work, I got a message from Mr Fallsoveralot asking if I fancied a dive. The weather was tolerable I said yes and asked The Zookeeper (who'd been off work all week) to come along too. With a late departure, we headed to the A-Frames for a cheeky dip.

Once there we found a few divers at the site including Sergeant Chris. I got the impression that one of the guys was quite inexperienced when he told me the visibility was really poor and you couldn't see anything. He had also lost his buddy's and swum back to shore alone. I feared the worst after that encounter but we pressed on. 

Mr Fallsoveralot finally managed to put on his own fins for the first time. As all drysuit divers will tell you, the first time you accomplish that task is an achievement. Moreover, he never fell over once, I'll need a new nickname soon. Well done Grant! 

Diving down we found the visibility to between 2-3m - not great, but not what we'd been led to believe. We had  a really pleasant relaxed dive down to 18m for 47 minutes. Not bad for a last minute decision. I never took many pictures.

Starfish

Mr Fallsoveralot

Mr Fallsoveralot & The Zookeeper

Moody Loch Long (This is an unedited picture)

A Record Breaker - 05/05/2014

Today Mr Fallsoveralot and I went to Twin Piers. We've had two abortive attempts to dive it together. However, today was to be the day. The tide was out, and in this state the bottom of the reef is a pretty shallow 19m, but it was perfect for some light hearted exploration.

We had expected this to be a seal dive as when we were kitting up there was a seal frolicking on the surface just out from our entry point. On the dive the only evidence of the seal was a lot of disturbed plumose anemones and some pretty poor visibility (2-3m)

Exploring the reef we found some of my favourite bits of sea life. In particular, a rich abundance of the sea cucumbers - there is a video below of what happens when you disturb one. On top of that we found a couple of conger eels at very shallow depths, a big ballan wrasse and the odd rock cook.

However, today's real diving interest for me came in the form of two new records.

1. lowest ever air consumption - 15.7 litres per minute
2. longest ever dive - 1hr 1minute

Sea cucumber

Shallow conger

Yellow cluster anemone