A rare free Sunday gave me the opportunity head up to
St Cats, Loch Fyne with Captain Al, TDFKAMF, the Vice President and Van der Brett. It took a little longer than usual to get there as the quickest road was still shut due to landslips (fortunately, it was open by the time way came back).
We were the first people to arrive at the site, but a small group arrived from
Splash Sports and a couple of guys from
Bo'ness Sub Aqua Club. In addition, en route I'd spotted my own dive club diving a
Twin Piers, Loch Long. I took the right course of action as I later heard that the visibility at the site was rotten.
By way of contrast, our visibility was terrible in the first few metres, but increased to around five below six metres. However, it was pitch black so it felt like we did two night dives as though it were a total eclipse of the loch. There was a nice array of life about on both dives. Life included:
- nudibranchs
- pollock
- cod
- scorpion fish
- pipefish
Emerging from the first dive boasting about the things we saw we started joking about a range of improbable spots (hammerheads, turtles, humpback whales etc). Which gave Van der Brett the opportunity to tell us about the time a encountered a great white shark while teaching in South Africa. When asked what he did he explained in great details that he tried not to look like a seal. There is a valuable lesson in there somewhere.
In dive 2 I took the opportunity to dive down to around 38m - a new depth record for me. This also allowed me to test the deco functionality of my
Mares Matrix. It worked an absolute treat. Taking me to safety stops at 12m and 3m. The next test is to start using it with Nitrox.
That said, the best moment of the two dives was when TDFKAMF was a attack by an angry Yarrell's Blenny. Apparently, it was provoked by another inconsiderate diver!
However, the highlight of the day came when we returned to
Aquatron at the tail end of their sale weekend and as well as my fills and usual banter I also got myself a bargain on a super sweet new
Fourth Element Thermocline top as well as bumping into the Mermaid! Add to all this the fact that I recovered my lost Arctic sock (
misplaced at the A-Frames on Thursday) and I'd say it was pretty darn good! Happy days.
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| Sealoch Anemone |
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| Nudi |
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| Squat Lobster |
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| Cod |
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| Greater Pipefish |
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| Scorpionfish |
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| Scorpionfish |
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