Seasearch - 24/03/2019

Recently, myself and some others completed the classroom session of the Seasearch course. Today, we would head to Loch Fyne to dive some sites with firework anemones to finish our observer course.

We dived one site I'd dived once before and another that I'd driven by loads of times but just ignored time and time again. It turns out I'd been right to ignore Cairndow View. 

Jester and I would diving together 'observing' the wildlife. It was funny, because I probably could of listed everything I saw in advance of the dive. However, that's hardly in the spirit of Seasearch. 

We took some nice snaps of firework anemones. So all was not lost.

Firework Anemone

Return to Cable Reef and Cedar Pride - 30/12/2014

I've dived both Cable Reef and the Cedar Pride before. However, I've only dived Cable Reef at night and the Cedar Pride is big enough to have a lot more to explore than I saw the first time.

Cable Reef was up first and it delivered some nice nudibranch's, a red bubble anemone, a grey moray and a few different types of pufferfish. It was cool to see a reef I'd only dived at night during the day. Especially, the cable section (an area where large electrical cables run from Jordan across to Taba in Egypt. This is also a coral nusery where environmentalists are regrowing different types of Red Sea coral.

The return to Cedar Pride was even better, with a Panther Torpedo Ray, a huge Napoleonfish, a wee visit inside the bridge of the wreck and a swim under of the wreck.

Grey Moray

Four Colour Chromodoris

Masked Puffer behind Grape Coral

Diadem Sea Urchin, Red Anemone and Red Sea Anemone fish

Panther Torpedo Ray

Big Napoleonfish

Big Napoleonfish (2)

All's Quiet on the Western Front - 29/12/2014

I must confess, I fled the UK on Boxing Day for sunnier climes. I flew first to Istanbul, Turkey before skipping over to Aqaba, Jordon. Regular readers will know I had a few dives here earlier in the year, but I felt I had some unfinished business with the area in terms of diving. And, let's be honest who wouldn't swap Scottish winter for the mild weather of the Middle East? So, here I am.

Today we dived two new sites (to us) in the area:

• First Bay (including the Eel Garden)
• Black Rock

North Bay 1&2 was, for us, a drift dive that took us through a site called the Eel Garden. It was nice and comprised Gill.I.Am's deepest ever dive (30m) and her first proper drift dive. I think she enjoyed both aspects.

For me the highlights were the corals. In Scotland, Hugh MacDiarmid once penned the following verse in regard to the white rose commonly found in the country. *clears throat*

The rose of all the world is not for me.

I want for my part

Only the little white rose of Scotland

That smells sharp and sweet—and breaks the heart.

How true! However, the corals of Aqaba must run it pretty close. I'll let the few decent pictures I took do most of the talking, but the second dive at Black Rock (recently featured in Diver magazine) it was just myself and Abood the DM who went in. We went to 40m, but a quarter twist and a drop of the wrist saw me clock 40.4m my deepest ever dive. :)

Lettuce Coral

Starry Puffer

Cornetfish

Worm

Coral

Coral

Coral

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

Adventures in Macro - 21/09/2014

I take snaps, but I'm not desperately into photography. So while diving with TDFKAMF today a chance surface conversation mentioning macros got me messing about with the "Super Macro" setting on my Sealife DC1400.

The site was St Catherine's, Seal Reef, Loch Fyne. We headed in pretty late in the day and dropped down to the 20m before heading across to the reef. Sadly the visibility was pretty poor - 1-3m at best.

The highlights of the dive were:

• A nice pipefish
• Lion's mane jellyfish
• Some nice big fish around the wee speedboat

However, I spent a fair bit of time trying to take pictures of wee things like sea squirts with this new magical setting I've discovered. The results can be seen below. Pretty poor I'd say, but I'll get better and have since discovered there is a new firmware update. 

Pipefish

Macro Sqaut Lobster

Lion's Mane Jellyfish

Macro Sea Squirt

Macro Sea Squirt

Macro Anemone

Nice Bucket Challenge - 31/08/2014

With the Zookeeper and the Announcer away to the Sound of Mull and TDFKAMF's suit in for repair, it fell to a pitying wife to ensure that I could have a dive this weekend.

The first question Gill.I.Am asks about any site is "what stuff's been sunk there?" Yip, she likes 'sunk stuff'. So it was with interest that she'd read my recent posts about St Catherine's sunken speedboat. Moreover, today's site choice also required easy 'into sea run' due to Gill filming her alternative ice bucket challenge.

In short, this meant that I visited Seal Reef, St Catherine's, Loch Fyne for the third time in 11 days.

At the site today were a selection of people from my diving past and present including:

• 4 members of my local ScotSAC club (including Wednesday's buddy Campbell who was now bandaged after a gardening incident)
• 1 former PADI instructor of mine and his buddy
• 3 members of Clydebank ScotSAC

Despite the volume of different groups, the site had quite a cordial feel to it. So, Gill and I kitted up and headed in. With the visibility initially around 2m I missed the speedboat, turned and came back to find it at 20m. Gill later, mentioned she was surprised to see it emerge from the gloom, as she thought I'd given up trying to find it. I think she liked it. My own difficulty finding it in low vis made me think that it could be worth buoying as it's a site often used by scub-newbs who may appreciate a surface guide. 

By the time we got out the water almost everyone had packed up and headed off. Which suited Gill fine as she was still to her glory run into the sea sans drysuit. She did, we had lunch and then headed back. 

Exploring wreck 1

Exploring wreck 2

Exploring wreck 3

Anemones

Whelk

Raining Catsharks and Dogfish - 14/08/2014

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” 

This evening the Zookeeper and I were both feeling the spirit of exploration. We packed everything into HMS Buffy and sailed like modern day Columbus' or Magellans to the nearest dive site we've never dived. The site was St Catherine's Reef, also known as the Council Yard.

I believe it is typically used as a training site and the Finstrokes guide was a bit vague on instructions and I think some of the comments relate to nearby Seal Reef (St Catherines 2). We therefore decided to park in the lay-by as the yard itself is now permanently locked. You can see the edge of HMS Buffy on the right of the photograph above.

We kitted up, buddy checked and headed in at the shore just down from the car. The initial past of the dive was very shallow, sandy and very red (quite Martian really), then we dipped below a halocline and, although dark, the visibility was decent at around 8m.

Just as I was starting to think that I'd been duped into diving a sand seabed, we stumbled into the first of our 'shark' encounters of the day. In total, I think we had four - or one 'shark' just playing games with us. Then came the reef.

It seems to me that looking from above with the shore at the top of the picture, the reef is a y-shape with a longish tail extending out to the left. We clearly missed the main part of the reef and stumbled onto the reef at around 14m . Some exploration of the tail found some lobster creels filled with small crab reprobates and juvenile offender cod. The lobsters were ubiquitous by their absence. To me it seems lobster creels are the Victorian prisons of the seabed - overcrowded, without compassion and indiscriminate.

We then followed the tail back to the main reef, dipping down to 20m and working our way back up. We saw the usual Loch Fyne life and had a bit of fun en route. 

We agreed that this would make a pleasant night dive with its easy access, large reef and nearby street lights. We are resolved to go back sans soleil.

Pre-dive beach surfing

Catshark snout by Laura

Measuring Catsharks by Laura

Catshark

The crab Barlinnie

  

Facesucker

Catshark

Lobster creel

Spider crab with sea squirt crown

Pipefish

A Commonwealth of Anemones - 29/07/2014

With Glasgow in full Commonwealth Games swing, the Announcer and I headed out the city to Loch Fyne for a dive. Drishaig Reef was our destination of choice as the Announcer had never seen the fine array of Firework Anemones. The day started badly with me forgetting my drysuit and the Zookeeper cancelling on us due to unforeseen circumstances. A quick trip back to my house and we headed out.

At the site we kitted up headed down to 25m where we encountered our first anemone of the day (we saw about 10 in all). Swimming along we also bumped into a nice wee scorpion fish in amongst the usual array of life.

In terms of photography I took lot of pictures of the anemones and the scorpion fish, but not much else.

Firework Anemone

Scorpion fish

Scorpion fish

Firework Anemone

Firework Anemone

Make Reefs, Not War - 15/07/2014

Make reefs, not war.

Day two of diving with Aqaba's Anchor and we hit two excellent reefs Seven Sisters & the Tank and Gorgon I. Both were quite similar with the exception being the former had a former US military tank. Young Al was having mask problems so Gill and I just followed Isaac through the maze of canyoning reefs. 

The tank was sunk by the King of Jordan to create an artificial reef. It probably was meant to be something big and interesting, but it now actually makes quite a potent symbol. I won't over egg my own political beliefs, but I think I've come up with a new slogan - make reefs, not war. Moreover, the tank has become an impressive nursery for a number of species fish and has also been colonised by fan corals - life thriving on a vehicle designed for killing.

Dive One gave us the more interesting sea life including a large Moray Eel, a Frogfish, an excellent little Nudibranch, a couple of little Scorpionfish and a baby Lionfish. Dive Two, however, was more about the giant coral sea stacks. It too was nice.

Tonight it's back to the Cedar Pride for my first ever night wreck dive. :D

Gill likes the tank

Red sea anemone fish

Nudi!

In amongst the coral

Frogfish

I think this is fire sponge, I never touched it to find out

Canyoning reef

Clam

Photobombed lionfish by Gill

The lionfish

Small coral thing

Mutha puffer

The Big Frewbowski