I've done St Abb's already this year, but this time myself and the Wylie Fox were warming up for Scapa Flow in June so we turned our attention to the Glanmire and it's square profile.
Regular readers will know I've done it before in the Rope to Nowhere and Return to the Glanmire. In each case I never exactly covered myself in diving glory. Today I knew it would be different. Firstly, I was pretty dived up and secondly I had learned lessons.
I was right, Wylie Fox and I descended the shot line and dived the wreck and surfaced doing our 10 minutes of decompression on the way up. The dive was quite unremarkable apart from a pleasant snakelocks anemone. That was exactly the sort of experience we both wanted for our Scapa preparations.
It was the second dive that was to be the standout however. A shallow dive (14m) at Skelly's Hole. I swapped buddies so that I could do some compass work with Walker Texas Ranger. WTR was leading as part of his ScotSAC Sport Diver training.
The site is pleasant with a series of narrow ravine's and gullies and at certain times of the year home to the Atlantic Wolffish and Lumpsuckers. I've seen a small lumpsucker once many years ago, but an adult has always elluded me and I had never seen a live wolffish.
As we cut our way through the ravines we first saw a large male lumpsucker. It was bigger than I'd expected and way more colourful. It would not have looked out of place in the tropics.
Then one of the other members of our group signalled he'd found something. I'm not sure he knew if it was a conger eel or a wolffish, but it was definitely the latter.
I surfaced delighted.I can't wait to return at the end of June.
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| Lumpsucker |
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| Wolffish |
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| Lumpsucker |
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| Dahlia Anemone |
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| Flabellina Lineata |
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| Dahlia Anemone |
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| Snakelocks Anemone |
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