Farne Way - 14/09/2017

It’s been a few years since I last dived at the Farnes. Sometimes you forget what it’s like. I mean, you remember the visuals, average diving, seals, the village of Seahouses, but I always forget just how playful and fun loving young seal are.

I was taking young Sarah in for her first taste of seal action. I explained the rule was to always let them come to you.

We did. They came, they posed for photos, they nibbled our fins, they tried to bite our fingers, they played with us. I think 

It genuinely has to be Farne away one of the best places on earth to dive with marine mammals.

The Poseidon's Parlour Seal of Approval - 26/09/2014

Yesterday I meandered down to the Farne Islands, England with Ace Divers. A few chums had been booked on the trip for quite sometime, but I heldoff until I saw the weather report. It's a risky approach in terms of availability, but I've never  regretted not being there when the weather is poor.

My buddy for the day was the Zookeeper, with the occassional appearance from Alky-Fras who was solo diving but hanging around us every so often.

If any of you have never been there before the Farne Islands are group of islands of the North East coast of England. In diving terms they are notable for two things:

• a selection of over 40 shipwrecks
• a colony of over 6,000 grey seals

Our diving for the day was focused on the seals.

I've dived here before on a couple of occassions and it was that I first met the Zookeeper last year. So I was pretty familiar with what was going to happen. :)  Due to tides, we dived the same spot twice but had quite different experiences.

The first dive averaged about 6m and it took us about 15 mintes before we had our first close encounter, but when it happened it happened in the usual style - fin nibbling. I was busy filming one nibbling the Zookeeper when I felt a tug on my own. I looked round to see two, one on each fin, like a pair of comedy seal skin slippers.

From then on in it was seal interaction gold. I was diving a 15l tank (thanks Campbell) so even after an hour underwater I still had 150 bar left!

After lunch and a cup of tea I was  ready for a more scenic dive, but most of the people wanted more seals - can you ever have enough?

The tide was in so the dive site had changed somewhat. Most people hung around the main seal entry exit point, but we went off on a wee adventure. We found some nice stuff too:

• an octopus
• a bloody henry or two
• millions of nudibranchs
• more seals
• loads of common lobsters
• squaties etc

Ahter my experimentation with macros last week I started trying to photograph the nudibranchs. As I did I felt a mouth round my head. Sadly, the Zookeepers camera battery had died, but it seems I was wearing a seal like a top hat. We stayed down for 58 minutes.

Nobody on the boat was seasick largely thanks to Stugeron.

The Zookeeper is excited

Scorpiofish 

Nudibranch

This One Goes to 11 - 24/09/2014

For those of you who have never seen Spinal Tap there is a glorious moment when rock legend Nigel Tufnel explains how his amp goes to eleven. It is an amazing scene. Well this week I'm going to take it to 15. 15l that is. 

As I'm boat diving at the Farne Islands, I thought I'd try out out a bigger tank. So I'm borrowing one of Campbell's. I'll let you know how I get on. In the meantime, enjoy the scene!