Poseidon's Parlour: The Five Dive Weekend Part 1

This weekend I had agreed to go diving on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was to be a three dive day, at three different sites with West Coast Divers on specific photo dives. We were visiting three sites for three different reasons. All on Loch Fyne, they were:

Furnace Quarry - photographing deeplet anemones
Drishaig Reef - photographing firework anemones
St Catherines - for BBQ fun and general reefy fun

Let me start by saying all three dives were good, but for me dives one and two were brilliant.

At Furnace Quarry we entered with the Mermaid buddying with the Bog Snorkeler, while I provisionally buddied with a BSAC diver from Dundee whom I'd never met. Pleasant chap, called James.

I lead the dive down to 25m to begin the deeplet search. We found them, but I forgot proper photographers like to take their time and take test shots. So when I looked back I could only see some flashes in the distance.

Once I retrieved them, we took some time to snap the deeplets. On the return journey the Bog Snorkeler got snagged in some fishing line. Meanwhile, after the dive we were told the fishermen were going mental and throwing bricks into water. Towards the end of the dive we encounters a school of pollock with a few corkwing wrasse mingled in between.

Once out the water we met another diver who told us about brick-gate. The Mermaid wanted to make an issue of it (she's feisty!), but instead we dekitted and headed to Drishaig for a cup of tea and the second dive.

James and I again buddied up and headed down to 30m to find the firework anemones. We were both starting to think we'd missed them. Then, just as we were about get shallow (deco was just 3 minutes away), we found loads - both fully extended and curled up.

As we got shallower we started to see large nudibranch eggsacks, and then James spotted a huge highland dancer nudibranch. Great find - I'd never seen one before.

Post dive we said farewell to James and headed to St Cats for burgers, square suasage and potato scones. The Mermaid put on quite the spread. The Bog Snorkeler was moaning about the midgies, but we had explain that they weren't that bad compared to what we were used to of late.

For the third dive it was just me and the Bog Snorkeler as Avril's drysuit had leaked and soaked her undersuit. It was a pleasant enough dive with a lot of things to keep B-Snork happy, but I was miffed I never found a Scorpion fish. Anyway, I've got two more dives before this weekend is over. :)