Werewolf Fish - 26/05/2018

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.

Lumpsucker

Wolffish

Lumpsucker

Dahlia Anemone

Flabellina Lineata

Dahlia Anemone

Snakelocks Anemone

Be Thankful and Rest -23/02/2014

Grant kitting up for dive two

I had agreed to go diving on Sunday with Laura and Grant. Our plan was to go to the A-Frames, Finnart for two dives - it's a great novice site. I had initially thought about driving over the Rest And Be Thankful to St Catherines and Loch Fyne, but had heard that the local dive school, with whom I learnt to dive, were heading there. Upon arrival at Finnart we found the car park jam packed and scuba divers bobbing around like flotsam and jetsam. So we continued around the loch to Conger Alley, a suitable site for the whole group (Fast Ed, Big Mack & Sergeant Chris subsequently joined our plans although Big Mack was suffering from bad food the night before and decided to provide some shore cover).

Once parked, I noticed a couple of people messing about with dive kit across the road. A quick conversation revealed that one of them worked for Aberdeen Watersports and they were down diving the site for the first time. I gave them some pointers and left them to themselves. Afterwards, I heard they had a great dive including a seal encounter at around 20m.

The first dive was a relatively sedate affair down to about 17m with little life about. We later heard about the seal and, as regular readers will know, that always scares the life away from a reef. 

After a sandwich and a bit of Ed-baiting we headed in for our second dive (19m). It started well with the discovery of a small lumpsucker. As neither Laura or myself had seen one before we had no idea what it was, I guessed wrongly at John Dory. On the dive I also found a nice little butterfish and a well camouflaged, large edible crab that surprised Grant somewhat (yes, I heard him squeal - very manly). However, it was Grant that was to emerge from the sea the hero after finding a bungee finstrap that Ed had lost on the first dive.

On route home I found out the Rest And Be Thankful had been closed at midday as a result of a landslide (they're quite common up there). So all in all conger Alley was a good choice as we got to go home, be thankful and rest after two decent dives.
I'm afraid I took no pictures, as I forgot my camera, but I've sneakily pealed some off Facebook so you can have something to look at. Most of them are surface antics.

Laura self portrait in pre-dive rain

  

Pre-dive contemplation

Fast Ed & Sergeant Chris

Yippee ki yay mother lumpsucker! 

I'm not sure what he's doing...you decide