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.
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| Burrowing common star |
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| Bloody Henry |
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| Partial Urchin Eclipse |
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| Camo Crab |
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| Sea squirt illuminated |
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