Black Torch Down - 04/11/2014

When Soul II Soul released Back to Life I'm not entirely sure they were singing about diving from an Egyptian live-aboard then returning to Scotland to dive in the cool winter waters. However, that is the reality that faced the Zookeeper and I tonight.

My regular Mares Abyss Navy  reg is in for servicing so I nabbed my wife's regulator and subbed on the 2nd stage of my pony (she has a fitted mouth piece). Of course, this meant ditching the pony and rebalancing my weight. All just a lot of hassle.

Diving at the A-Frames, I suggested a different dive at this site to the Zookeeper, Out usual plan is to dive north on to the big frame head down to the deeper frame before coming back along the other frames. However, today we were diving down to the big frame before heading off to the right where we'd hopefully find some conger eels, cuttlefish and lobster amongst the wreckage.

As we reached the big frame, I realised I'd droppped my backup torch, a Subgear SP30. This was not good news as my Mares EOS is rechargable and only had about 50 minutes of life on the current charge. We spent the rest of the dive retracing steps to find it until the juice ran out of my main torch. This was to no avail. Here's hoping one of my pals can find in the coming weeks. A case of Black Torch Down.

I reckon the dive has cost me about £1.50 for every minute we stayed down. However, I realised in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter, as on the way home a BMW driver nearly smashed into me in a fit of aggression with another driver. If it hadn't of been for my evasive action I'd have lost more than a torch.

Quite literally chillin'

Sea squirts

Macropodia rostrata