Triple Threat - 10/06/2017

Ed mourns the loss of his 'latte'

With Scotland playing England at football (soccer for my American friends), Fast Ed and I decided that we would do just one dive slightly further afield than we'd normally go and then head back to get us home in time for the game. 

We had made a shortlist of three sites, but in the end decided on Triple Reef. We decided to follow Peter Gunn's suggested route in the comments of the guide.

The day didn't start well for Fast Ed who lost his latte to carelessness and also forgot his giant baby romper (undersuit). 

We crawled along the B8000 looking for the site we found it. Had a quick exploration and then kitted up.

Now both Fast Ed and I have a few dives under our (weight) belts and the guide was reasonably accurate. However, there was a triple threat even for the more experienced recreational diver.

1. The entry/exit is hazardous it's not worth pretending otherwise. I did it with my twinset and I won't lie the walk up was especially hard work.
2. It was all a little deeper than expected, with longer swims from point to point. As such decompression (for those who wish to avoid it) is a real risk if you are taking a leisurely approach..
3. We dived it mid flood and the current, particularly at around 15m,was seriously strong. Resulting in an increased SAC rate.

All this said, it was a great dive. The site was hoaching with fish, edible crabs, a conger eel, anemones. All with great visibility.

Back on the surface we took a little time to plot some additional, nearby sites in the sat-nav for a future trip.

Cushion Star

Northern Sunstar

Dahlia Anemone

Common Sunstar

Southern Men - 27/05/2017

Leeds isn't very north!

Neil Young once penned an epic song about the Southern Man. However, it is the response by US southern rockers Lynard Skynard that we all remember. It's funny, but whenever my pals from Scuba Leeds come to visit I'm always reminded of this particular episode in the annals of rock - that's ANNALS btw.

The reason, well, when you hang about the people from the North of England you often here them self refer to themselves as "Northerners", but when you look at a map, they're lucky if they're much more than two fifths of the way up the UK. They don't even know what north is!! At this point regular readers who live 66° north will have a little chuckle to themselves.

However, it was nature who had the last chuckle as I dived with Josh and the rest of the crew at St Catherine's.

Doing two dives, we had three unusual visitors. The first I took as an omen, that strangely enough I had been imagining on the way up - a pod of dolphins on the surface. Now the irony of this wasn't lost on me because on Josh's last visit to Scotland we dived at Anchor Point and I told him about all things it was possible to see, but won't - yip, pod of dolphins was on that list. We enjoyed them for a few minutes before we kitted up and headed in.

Once in the water the second unusual visitor to the site was... a northern sunstar. I've seen them here before, but only occasionally. We chuckled back on the surface as I explained to Josh that what we had just seen (to be said in my best "northerner" accent) "t'was a northern sunstar". If this is lost on you because you don't live in the UK, then imagine the voice of Sean Bean from Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings Fame.

Then on the second dive as I photographed some little nudibranchs Josh swam over the top of the largest thornback ray I have ever seen. Too big to photograph and get in focus I switched to video...

Josh and I ended the day happy.

Northern Sunstar

Flabellina Lineata

Flabellina Lineata

Limacia Clavigera