Northern Exposure - Part 2 - 29/04/2017

Camas Torsa

With all our divers now firmly ensconced at Resipole, Loch Sunart, our second day of diving took us to nearby Camas Torsa which translated from Gaelic means Thor's Bay. I'm not entirely sure of why its called that, but I suspect it may be because of the thunderous wind. That would certainly make sense.

However, that same wind gave the Barrman the opportunity to set up the new ESAC events shelter, as supplied by Cotswold Outdoor for a great price.

Having failed to pack my camera charger, it marked the end of my underwater photography, but I wasn't too bothered given I had never dived these sites before and preferred to focus on the basics of navigation.

 

My first dive was an exploratory one with the Chairman. We made our way down to 35m and found ourselves midway down a large wall. It reminded me a little of Anchor Point, but with less life.  My personal view was that it had been dredged by a scallop dredger in the last year or so decimating much of the soft coral life that should have been present.

 

That said we had a nice dive just exploring and enjoying the life that was there:

• Giant seapens
• Macropodia Rostrata
• Edible crabs
• Queen scallops

For my second dive on the site I teamed up with Ian (who has complained he doesn't have a nickname, that may change in my next blog...) Having already explored much of the site my focus was on giving Ian as good an experience as I could given the depth limitation. With that in mind I had said to the surface marshall that we'd be down for 50 minutes wit a plan to stay at 15m until we hit 100 bar and then return the same distance at 7-5m coming up with 50 bar.

 

As it was the current had increased and we drifted for 25m barely flicking a fin and so had to turn back at 25 minutes. The return journey didn't take too much longer, but it did take a bit more work as we headed into the current (most pronounced at the point).

 

As we surfaced I made a mental note not to rush back to this site, before celebrating Ian's longest ever dive - 54 minutes.

Camas Torsa Dive HQ