Campbell's Cream of Fyne - 27/08/2014

Unusually (for a Wednesday), I set off after work to meet Campbell for a dive at St Catherines 2 (Seal Reef). In all honesty, my preference would have been for a different site (my last dive was here), but we had never dived together so a mutually familiar site was probably a good idea.

Campbell is one of the instructors at Eastwood Divers, my local ScotSAC club. He's on a mission to get a few more dives under his belt, so that he can celebrate his 600th dive in the Red Sea at the end of September. I was available to dive with him tonight and, like any ship in storm, I was an acceptable port! 

In the car up Campbell seemed surprised to hear that the site had a small, wrecked speedboat at around 20m. As a result, I offered to guide him down before heading to the reef.

While kitting up I discovered that my tank had only been filled to 170 bar which was a bit rubbish, but I still reckoned I could safely squeeze at least 40 minutes out of that. Campbell was fine with that. It could have been awkward otherwise!

We started well, passing a nice dogfish en route to the wreck where another dogfish was hiding in the buoyancy tank. From there we headed over to the reef to look for critters. Amongst the usual fayre we found a large 'smiling' scorpion fish. My highlight came at the very end of the dive when we almost bumped into a drifting lion's mane jellyfish. I went in close for some pictures, but Campbell, who's allergic to the sting, wisely kept his distance.

Anyway, despite the air shortage I mustered about 47 minutes and a max depth of 23m. A decent dive all round.

Sea toad

Common sea urchin

Green sea urchin

Scorpion fish

Starfish on pointed rock

Lion's mane jellyfish