The Loch Long Road to Recovery - 27/04/2014

Panoramic view of A-Frames entry and 29 Steps

Today I had time to sneak in a cheeky dive between spending time with Gill and playing funky bass at church in the evening. As such, Mr Fallsoveralot accompanied me on a dive at the A-Frames, Loch Long. 

As regular West of Scotland divers will know, visibility in Loch Long has been terrible in recent weeks. The cause of this may well be seasonal, but the deterioration also coincides with a series of blasts further up the loch where the UK keeps its nuclear arsenal. As such, Facebook pages and newsgroups have been awash with poor visibility reports including one of my own! We decided with no credible reports in recent weeks we'd take the plunge.

The site was slowly clearing of people by the time we arrived, and a few discussions revealed that at least three BSAC branches had been training. Moreover, my local dive shop, Aquatron, were also running a PADI Openwater course less than 100 yards along the shore. As such I feared that visibility would be poor.

As we entered the water we descended through the halocline with visibility of around 5m. We reached the first A-Frame with visibility of around 4m. Moving from frame to frame as we reached the 3rd frame we passed through a cloud of what I think was our own silt being swept out by the current which reduced visibility to less then 50cm. However, staying close to Mr Fallsoveralot we finned for around 10m and eventually emerged from the cloud and back into some decent viz.

As we returned to shallower water the visibility improved to around 7m.

I never took my camera on the dive, but Grant did. I spotted some nice sea cucumbers amongst the usual selection of critters. Moreover, Mr Fallsoveralot never fell over once. I put it down to him using a dumpy 12l cylinder for the first time.

Sea Cucumber (taken by Grant)

Search & Recovery - 22/04/2014

After Sunday's dive I discovered that I had lost a weight pouch. I don't know if it happened in the water or at some other point. Today I asked Fast Ed and Sergeant Chris if they'd help me look for it. They are very obliging. So, we headed to St Catherine's after work and despite the poor traffic we arrived and kitted up before 8pm - still daylight.

There were other divers onsite - Paul 'The Kingmaker' King and Martin Kerr. The Kingmaker is well known to me - I have on occasions played badminton with him - Martin Kerr however, is a shadowy figure. No-ones quite sure what he does. All we know is that he's some kind of Gandalf of the IT World and mad, keen rebreather diver. By way of contrast, The Kingmaker, is not a rebreather diver, although he has been described as "a well used scrubber". (A little rebreather humour for you there!)

Myself, Fast Ed & Sergeant Chris entered the water as a three and retraced my underwater steps from Sunday heading down to around 25m. Life was plentiful, but I never saw the stars of Sunday's dive, but as you'll see below I took a few pictures. However, I never found my pouch.

Back on the surface, we had a brief chat with The Kingmaker and Gandalf IT before they headed off and we rekitted for a 2nd dive. This time, it was to be a night dive. Fast Ed led us down to the reef (21m) where we again began the conger hunt. We didn't find it, but we did find the big scorpion fish and cushion star - though my camera had packed in by this point. The sea scorpion was enjoying the small shrimp that our torchlight was attracting.

Add in some dogfish - technically making it a shark dive - and we all had a great time. The only down side is my still missing pouch and the late night trip home.

I later heard that The Kingmaker broke his own personal record for Scottish dive longevity - 81 minutes. Gandalf IT only had 10 minutes of scrubber time left, but I'm sure the Kingmaker will happily add to that next week. 

Rock Cook

Spiny Star

Goldsinny

Sea Scorpion

Santa Catherine, Costa del Fyne - 20/04/2014

Mr Fallsoveralot

Today I went with Mr Fallsoveralot to St Catherine's for a couple dives. However, the sun came out and it's safe to say that it felt more like Spain than Argyll. Upon arrival at the site there were some other divers kitting up and a couple already coming out of the water. The buddy pair coming out turned out to be friends from my local ScotSAC club - Marion and Campbell.

After some chat, with Grant celebrating his 20th dive I suggested that he lead me down to the reef, with me providing backup in the event he got a bit lost. Once on the reef the critter hunt began in earnest. I went to a known conger spot with no luck, but then I started spotting some nice creatures:

• a large red cushion star
• a predating sea scorpion
• a butterfish
• various wrasse/goby

In the end we were down for about 40 mins and max'ed out around 26m.

Back on the surface some more chat and some sandwiches in the sun set us up nicely for the second dive. Entering the water we took some tips from Campbell and Marion on where to find a nice big conger eel for Grant. Clearly overwhelmed by this information Grant proceeded to live up to his nickname and fell over. Injury free, we headed back down to the reef and found the conger eel. We waited around to see if it could be lured out - it couldn't be tempted.

Moving up the reef we stumbled across some nice life - pipefish, edible crabs and the usual variety of critters. For me, nothing topped the beautiful cushion star. :) I was a happy echinoderm enthusiast.

Cushion star

Spiney star

Sea scorpion

Bloody henry

Shy conger eel

Disco diving

6 Armed starfish

Pipefish

Two-spot goby

From Wrasse-ia with Love - 17/04/2014

Frewbowski, The Zookeeper & The Announcer

Andrea, Laura and myself went to Furness to dive Dogfish Reef, Loch Fyne. Laura (henceforth known as the Zookeeper) hadn't dived the site in years and Andrea (to be known as the Announcer) had never dived here.As for me, I haven't dived there since March 2013 when I set my depth record of 32.8m while doing my PADI Deep Diver Speciality. It was the last bit of PADI training I did.

Tonight was to be a more sedate affair with our plan to go down to around 20m. We had agreed, however, that should we something deeper, but within our depth limits, we'd go down to investigate. :)

Before going in Laura was up to some photographic high jinks. Naturally, I was happy to participate.

The Zookeeper, The Announcer & Frewbowski

We began the dive at low tide which meant a troublesome stagger over the rocky entry. Once everyone had safely entered, we dropped down to 22m. As we swam along I noticed an outline out the corner of my eye. It was slightly gnome-ish. Signalling to the others I dropped down to discover the legendary Dogfish Reef Gnome Garden. Now gnomes divide divers. I quite like them as long as they tastefully placed. This particular 'garden' is a bit haphazard for my tastes, but not everyone has my artistic eye for detail.

Once we'd all taken some snaps we headed off back up the rocky reef to search for sea life. First up was a nice common sunstar, but then the fish started appearing. Schools of pollock, corkwing wrase, ballan wrasse, goldsinny, leopard gobies. In fact, it was the most fish diverse dive I've had in Scottish waters. If it weren't so green and cold in the water I'd have thought I was somewhere tropical.

We maxed out at around 26.5m and had a very pleasant 40+ minutes.

Shrimp

Spiny star

Goldsinny

The Announcer and The Zookeeper

Zookeeper

Announcer

Sunstar

Big creepy gnome

Little gnomes

Fyne & Dandy - 16/04/2014

Laura gets the BBQ burning

As you'll know from my previous post my last dive attempt was aborted. Today I headed back to St Catherine's, Loch Fyne for a couple of evening dives. I was accompanied by Mr Fallsoveralot and Gillian on dive one and Grant and Laura on dive two.

Dive one began with a slow descent down to 10m, but Gill was having real trouble equalising so after about 10 minutes she aborted and returned to shore. Once I saw she was safely out of the water Grant and I headed back down, this time a bit deeper.

Visibility was excellent and as we worked our way around the reef I spotted a large Long Spined Sea Scorpion. Undoubtedly the star of the dive, it hung around for quite a while.

Back on the surface I turned to see that Laura had arrived and that the BBQ was smouldering. However, the BBQ was to be the focus of our activities. Thankfully, Laura showed impressive pyro skills and got it going in the drizzle. I then did the manly meat cooking and we had an impressive selection of sausages and burgers.

Dive 2 was to follow the same route as dive one but gave us a different selection of sea life. Including a large sepiola atlantica (cuttlefish) and one of the biggest dogfish I've ever seen (80-90cms). As Grant said, "I;m classing that as a shark dive." He even had a chance to touch it. It was very docile.

On either dive, however, there was no sign of the eel that we'd encountered last week.

Dogfish (Catshark)

Sea Scorpion

Sea Scorpion

Cuttlefish

Grant

Abandon Trip - 13/04/2014

Myself and Mr Fallsoveralot headed out to Loch Fyne for  a couple of dives. As we drove through the Rest & Be Thankful, the wind was really starting to get up - The Beast, my trusty 4x4, was really taking a buffeting  as we went through the mountain pass.

Upon arrival the swell was starting to get up and we watched as some other divers were getting swept past the reef before they had even had the chance to get under the water. I looked at Mr Fallsoveralot and offered him a do-over later in the week -  he accepted. Probably a sensible decision.

On the way back we discovered that the wind was reportedly gusting up to 80mph. Definitely a sensible decision.

It Was The Best of Dives, It Was The Worst of Dives Part 2 - 10/04/2014

Now as you know, that last dive was, to use a three letter acronym, PDG! (pretty darn good). For the second dive we had galloped across the Rest & Be Thankful to Twin Piers, Loch Fyne. By the time we had parked, rekitted and entered the water it was 9.15 and dark. So with strobes and torches on we began to descend.

By the time we reached 6 metres I was questioning if there was much point continuing as the visibility was less than 50cm. Laura convinced me to persevere by the time we reached around 10-12m the visibility had increased from zero to poor (2m). Navigating to the reef I barely saw any life - even on the reef it was scarce. Then finally, after reaching the reef, I saw a beautiful little sea cucumber, then a conger eel, then a dab, then a scorpion fish, then another sea cucumber. Don't get me wrong, it was still a terrible dive in terms of visibility, but the sea cucumbers made up for it!

The return was an awkward trip back through the poor visibility. We came out the water at 10pm, just in time for Ed to get up the road in time for bed.

Pink Spotted Sea Cucumber

Dab

It Was The Best of Dives, It Was The Worst of Dives Part 1 - 10/04/2014

Tonight's diving adventure was a tale of two dives.The first at St Catherine's, Loch Fyne was to be followed by a scramble back over to Twin Piers, Loch Long. This effectively meant our surface interval was also part of our return journey. In part, this was to allow Fast Ed to squeeze in two dives. The poor boy had a 6.30am start and was insisting he had to tucked up in bed with Bella Swan by 11.30pm. I was off the next day and Laura didn't have to start work until after 10 so neither of us were particularly fussed about what time we got back to Glasgow.

As it is, we got to St Cat's and kitted up and entered the water in daylight at around 7.30pm. Before going in we encountered the guys from Evolution Divers, with whom we've shared a few dive sites in recent weeks. Entering as they exited the water, they informed us of great visibility of around 8-10m at various depths - good times!

Ellen the Eel

We entered and hit the reef at about 20m. I was keen to find a conger eel that Laura and I had found on our last trip there (So Much Nature Part 1). My memory and blog suggested we had found it at about 23m, but Laura's (dodgy) memory reckoned it was a good bit shallower so I lead us back up along the reef's edge to 15m, before turning back and heading deeper. Just as I hit 23m, I saw Ed flashing his torch a few metres back at 21m - he'd found it! So there we have it, if we took an average of both Laura and I's estimates we'd have found it straight away. There's a lesson there I'm sure.

After spending a bit of time with Ellen the Eel, we worked our way around the reef spotting various bits and bobs. The star of the show was an unusually shallow Nephrops Norvegicus, also known as the Norwegian lobster, Dublin Bay Prawn, Langoustine or Scampi.
Forty two minutes after entering the water we raced up the beach, switched tanks and threw the assembled kit in the back of the car and drove drysuit clad back to Loch Long....

Langoustine

Who Framed Fast Ed? - 03/04/2014

Fast Ed has been travelling the globe as part of his role as an International Weegie* of Mystery. So, when he thought that Laura's van trouble was going to scupper his chances of a first dive in a few weeks he was gutted. However, like a sexy scuba diving Jessica Rabbit, I stepped forward and went with Ed to the A-Frames.

By the time I arrived Ed had mostly kitted up, so I raced to catch up. At one stage I realised I'd left my 3Kg pony counter weight at home, but Ed had two spare 2Kg shot pouches that I stuffed into a BCD pocket. It was strange though, it just wasn't what I'm used to. As such, by the time we entered the choppy water I was feeling a bit uneasy and unbalanced.

Dropping down to about 10m I took a few moments to adjust my straps and let myself get comfortable, before heading out to the A-Frames. We did three of the Frames, at one point (23.4m) disturbing a small group of scallops, some of whom leapt for joy at our presence.

The return swim was very pleasant spotting a couple of butterfish, a small flat fish and a big pinkish fish that I never snapped and have yet to identify.

Colour clusters

Square go

Worms

Butterfish

Flat fish

* Weegie is a derogatory term used by some people to describe the inhabitants of Glasgow. An abbreviation of Glaswegian, it has now been somewhat taken to our hearts and is used as a term of endearment.