Poseidon's Parlour: The Lion's King

The Usual Suspects

The Mermaid had asked the Zookeeper and I if we wanted to dive on Tuesday. Naturally, with pleasing weather and some flexi-time from work I was unlikely to say no. As per usual we met at the Sealife centre and headed north from there.

Our destination was to be Drishaig Reef, Loch Fyne a site that none of us had ever dived. The dive guide made it seem quite a sedate affair (it was) but we were hoping for Firework Anemones and maybe some other interesting critters.

As always when diving with the potent combination of the Zookeeper and the Mermaid you have to keep your wits about you - you never know when you're going to get snapped. As such, I kept my trademark look - Smoulder™ - on at all times. I can be seen Smouldering™ in almost every shot. It's safe to say that antics weren't in short supply.

We kitted up in a relatively midgie free environment entered the water and headed straight down to 29 metres turned left and pottered about. Firework anemones by the bucket load. It's a great site if you want photograph them. Moving back to the shallows, there was the usual assortment of life including dabs, squat lobsters and brittle stars.

Team Biff (1)

Team Biff (2)

The dive highlight for me was as we reached around 5m at the end of the dive. The sunlight streaming down into the seaweed made it seem almost tropical, then as I looked up I saw something I haven't seen since my earliest days of diving - even then, back in those days I was too scared to approach it - a lion's mane jellyfish. It wasn't a massive one, but it's tentacles were easily 2m in length. I swam around it being careful not to get stung. It was beautiful.

Heading in at Drishaig

Once out of the water we quickly dekitted as the midgies were massing and we jumped in cars back towards Conger Alley on Loch Long. We wanted to see if we could find the octopus again and the Zookeeper had some old squid for luring out the the conger eels.

Once there we encountered the full wrath of the Highland Midge - it was unpleasant - so quickly kitted up and entered the water. The visibility was very poor and not a patch on the 5-7m we had encountered at Loch Fyne. I estimate that in the first 10m it was probably less than 1m. However, by the time we reached our destination (20m) although it was pitch black, the visibility was around 4m or as far as your torch could penetrate. It was also noticeably colder.

We lured out a conger and took some pics before setting off in search of Paul the Octopus. We found him lurking in his usual place. I never took any pictures, but the Zookeeper force fed him a camera lens - it doesn't pay to be shy in this game.

At this stage the Mermaid of Kilmarnock signalled that she was four minutes from deco. We safely headed up, and out, to the waiting ravenous horde and bolted to McDs for a late night hot chocolate.

Another hour and half of diving in the bag.