Scapa Flow Day 5 - The Mighty Mighty Markgraf - 13/06/2018

The SMS Markgraf and SMS Brummer wre our targets for the day. The Markgraf would end up our deepest dive of the week and the point at which I started putting my limited technical dive planning skills to use.

The dive was the deep wreck, highlight of the week.Which was weird because it was followed by the worst - the SMS Brummer. I won't say anything about the Brummer. It really wasn't worth the O2, but it ticked a box. The SMS Markgraf however....

The dive started near the bow where we followed a heavy chain down to the seabed and started working our way to the stern and the phenomenonally huge rudders. before returning along the upturned keel back to the rope care of a very pleasant drift.

It's really hard to explain the scale of the wreck, or how pleasant it was to dive.

Plan the dive, dive the plan

Scapa Flow Day 4 - Battleships & Butterfish -12/06/2018

Our fourth day on ‘the Flow’ saw us dive our first Battleship. The SMS Kronpronz Wilhelm was the the target followed by a ‘shallow’ dive on the SMS Coln.

I was starting to notice my desat times were getting higher and higher, much like my deco penalties. As such it was probably the first day when I consciously took my foot off the diving gas, opting to no deco the Coln as I’d been there before. 

The Kronprinz W. was to be my first glimpse of one of the famous 12” guns. I liked it, though not as much as the Wylie Fox who proved to be a real fan of the big guns. 

I was particularly moved by the way nature had paid no head to the death and destruction mayhem of the guns and had instead used them to grow sea squirts and dead men’s fingers. There’s a metaphor there for life, I think. I was also starting to realise I was more interested in butterfish than battleships.

The Journey to Atlantis - 01/10/2017

Earlier in the year I took the decision to improve upon my diver training. As such in 2017 I'd already added the following to my diving arsenal:

• ScotSAC Master Diver
• ScotSAC Deep Rescue
• PADI Twin Set Diver
• NAS MArine Archaology

This weekend I was about to add another - ScotSAC Deep Diving. The course which it seems is run once a year teaches divers to "dive to depths appropriate to the equipment you use, to a maximum depth of 50m".

So with a full day of lectures complete, a few practical planning exercises done and our planning done for our dive, myself and Marchen (my buddy for the day) headed to the curiously named Hangman's Reef with our instructors and we were set to go. We planned the dive and dived the plan overcoming the flashcard hurdles put in our place. 

The whole thing was more of an exercise in discipline as opposed to diving deep. It certainly taught me a more disciplined less computer-centric approach to diving beyond 30m.

We surfaced bang on time. Now qualified to go to 50m. Later that evening I had dinner with the Gandalf of the Internet and the Kingmaker, we made plans to go to deeper. So now the journey to Atlantis begins.

It'll Be Just Like Beggar's Canyon Back Home! - 01/01/2015

Today was the day when Gill.I.am was finally doing the deep dives of her PADI Deep Speciality with Aqaba's Anchor in Jordan. We were going to be doing two dives to 40m today. The first at the Power Station and the second down a deep canyon near the wreck of the Cedar Pride. 

As the Power Station was to be Gill's first dive down to 40m I never took the camera even though this would be our best chance of seeing a shark. The site reminded me a lot of Dogfish Reef / Furnace Quarry back home for a number of reasons including:

• Steep slope straight down
• Popular with fishermen
• Lots of discarded fishing line and litter on the reef

It was comforting to know that we all face the same problems.

The dive went well without being too eventful. We saw stonefish, mantis shrimp and morays but no sharks or turtles.

We went to the second site where they were also running a rescue course. I got to be the panicked diver and got to shout for help theatrically in both English & Arabic. I was told my performance was excellent. The guy passed.

Our second dive took us down a deep canyon and as we hit 40m we finally struck gold for the day. A whopping 1.4m green turtle. I got excited, started taking pictures and gunned through my air at depth.  Fortunately, Abood the DM was carrying a spare cylinder so I borrowed that for 50 bar and a few minutes of deco. :)

Abood enjoys a fresh beverage

Turtle

Turtle

Cedar Pride

Starry Puffer

Gill and Diver

From Wrasse-ia with Love - 17/04/2014

Frewbowski, The Zookeeper & The Announcer

Andrea, Laura and myself went to Furness to dive Dogfish Reef, Loch Fyne. Laura (henceforth known as the Zookeeper) hadn't dived the site in years and Andrea (to be known as the Announcer) had never dived here.As for me, I haven't dived there since March 2013 when I set my depth record of 32.8m while doing my PADI Deep Diver Speciality. It was the last bit of PADI training I did.

Tonight was to be a more sedate affair with our plan to go down to around 20m. We had agreed, however, that should we something deeper, but within our depth limits, we'd go down to investigate. :)

Before going in Laura was up to some photographic high jinks. Naturally, I was happy to participate.

The Zookeeper, The Announcer & Frewbowski

We began the dive at low tide which meant a troublesome stagger over the rocky entry. Once everyone had safely entered, we dropped down to 22m. As we swam along I noticed an outline out the corner of my eye. It was slightly gnome-ish. Signalling to the others I dropped down to discover the legendary Dogfish Reef Gnome Garden. Now gnomes divide divers. I quite like them as long as they tastefully placed. This particular 'garden' is a bit haphazard for my tastes, but not everyone has my artistic eye for detail.

Once we'd all taken some snaps we headed off back up the rocky reef to search for sea life. First up was a nice common sunstar, but then the fish started appearing. Schools of pollock, corkwing wrase, ballan wrasse, goldsinny, leopard gobies. In fact, it was the most fish diverse dive I've had in Scottish waters. If it weren't so green and cold in the water I'd have thought I was somewhere tropical.

We maxed out at around 26.5m and had a very pleasant 40+ minutes.

Shrimp

Spiny star

Goldsinny

The Announcer and The Zookeeper

Zookeeper

Announcer

Sunstar

Big creepy gnome

Little gnomes