Climbing the Walls - 23/09/2018

When my local dive shop arranged a Mares Try Dive Day at Caolasnacon I was always going to be on it like sonnet.

I had wanted to try out a few different things - which in the end I didn't, but a number of my club members did. Examples include:

• the Mares goodman torch strap
• the Mares heated vest
• a Mares single tank wing

However, a suit leak on a wee training dive around the wall with a trainee meant that I chose to spend much of the day trying to dry out my suit and undersuit for an evening dive with Mares UK Sales Manager and his buddy.

Jester was accompanying me as we to Kentallan Wall for the first time in darkness. When we went, Jester and I promised very little. "Perhaps some nudibranch's and ray. No guarantees."

However, between the two of us Jester and I knocked it out the park. 

• Thornback ray
• Curled octopus 
• Sepiola Atlantica
• Nudibranch's

Oh, and let's not forget my magnificent navigation. 

Curled Octopus

Thornback Ray

Caolasnacon

Sepiola Atlantica

Northern Sunstar

Nudi

Nudi

Breda & Butter - 20/07/2018

When the Barrman suggested I could join him to dive the Breda I was happy to jump at the chance. I was off that week and happy to head to North Ledaig Caravan park with my campervan for some fun and games.

Just as we launched the Zodiac, another dive boat appeared at the wreck and troop of divers all jumped in. We hoped it wouldn't be too big a deal. It wasn't, we never saw any of the other divers at all.

It's a big ship, standing up right in around 30m of water, the deck was around 8m off the seabed and the seabed itself is littered with the detritus from the wreck. So, it's quite a nice profile to dive the seabed round the ship and then come up onto the deck and spend the rest of the dive there.

There were some nice highlights:

• a conger lurking amongst the wreckage
• an octopus who seemed to object to me clearing some discarded fishing lures
• nudibranchs
• the solid cargo of cement the ship was carrying

A little before we ended the dive I looked at my computer and noticed I had a couple of minutes of deco. I asked the Barrman what he had....well, he had lots. So we headed up my SMB to the surface where I swithered about leaving the Barrman to do his 15 minutes on his own. I didn't of course, that would be the sign that I'm a terrible buddy/human being, but I did still think about it.

I emerged from the water experiencing sinus squeeze brought on by my emerging wisdom teeth. For me diving was done for the day, but it was worth it. 

Work Pays - 02/07/2018

Sometimes life throws up a serendipitous moment. For me work had required me to attend a meeting a few miles from my usual diving haunts. The meeting would take me to lunchtime by which point I had enough time in the bank to flexi off in the afternoon.

Jester, who never works Monday, had agreed to drive up and meet me for an afternoon dive at Seal Reef, St Catherines.

I was still without my camera so was again on the look out for things for Jester to photograph. We had been swimming about for 15 minutes when I noticed a cluster of clam shells lying outside a hole.  I peered in and saw the pulsating mass of an octopus. I signalled to Jester and showed him the hole, he looked in and wondered what I'd seen. Eventually after an underwater argument explaining what he was looking at, he reluctantly took a picture and continued the dive. 

Back on the shore we laughed. It was Jesters first ever octopus and my first ever octopus at the site. 

Work it seems pays.

Shawaddy Wuddy - 24/06/2018

When the club headed over to St Abbs for the third time in three months, I wasn't sure what to expect. I was diving with the Wanton Hussy. It was his first dives off a boat, he was relatively in experienced. The problem I wasn't expecting was that my relatively new Sealife DC2000 was to be the thing that went wrong - It was subsequently returned, and replaced under warranty.

As a result, I have no pictures of any of the cool things we saw including the octopus. Sad times. Meanwhile, while we were under the water England won 6-1 against the mighty Panama. Apparently they're going to win the World Cup.

Lanzarote Day 5 - The German Venus - 05/07/2017

I remember being in Florence's Uffizi Gallery and looking at Botticelli's masterpiece The Birth of Venus. Her modesty was protected by her flowing hair. I never loved the picture, though to be honest I'm not a fan of Renaissance painting.

My final day of diving with Dawn Dives brought back that memory. You see, we were diving in the North East of the island at a nudist colony - fortunately we still got to dive in wetsuits! One of my buddies for the day - a fellow Scot - reassured me that it was a great dive and one of the few in the world where you're almost guaranteed to see both tentacles and testicles on the same dive. 

We kitted up and  headed down the carved cliff staircase to the rocks below without seeing a single nudist. I assumed nudists, unlike divers, were late risers.

The site is actually pretty barren in terms of fish life, but the steeply tumbling white sands provide a home to a a number of rays. However, most divers come here for the topography and the opportunity to go deep quickly. 

It was pretty spectacular on both dives, yielding torpedo rays and stingrays on both dives. Hervie's eyes were good at spotting them too.

However, the Venus memory was brought back to me at the end of the dive when I came up from three metres at the long swimming pool style stairs onto the rocks. As I looked up, at the top of the stairs stood a German Venus - proud and unabashed with no clam shells or long hair to cover her modesty. Yet it was me that was emerging from the sea.

Ski slopes

Torpedo Ray

Octopus

Stingray

Stingray

Buddies

Buddies

That's My Little Octopussy - 31/12/2014

In 1983 Roger Moore made one of the worst Bond movies ever. However, it did spawn one of the most memorable lines ever. A line that runs through my mind sometimes when I dive.

James Bond: [looking at the tattoo on Magda's back] What is that?

Magda: That's my little octopussy.

Indeed, "that's my little octopussy". I've seen octopus' on four occasions. Twice in Scotland and once in Egypt and once the other day at Black Rock in Aqaba. On each occasion I have spectacularly failed to photograph them. Either because I've been too slow to realise what I'm looking at or too incompetent with a camera. 

Today Gill.I.Am was beginning a PADI Deep Speciality with one of the owners Isaac of Aqaba's Anchor. I was diving initially with one of the DMTs nicknamed Woody. We had a nice dive zooming around Rainbow Reef and the Cedar Pride. However, I'd be lying if I said that my heart was ever racing. You know the way it does when you see something really neat underwater. Don't get me wrong I still had fun, but it wasn't that exciting.

When I came back to the shore and Gill mentioned that she'd had a nice encounter with a Giant Moray I was a somewhat jealous, although I like to think I never let it show. I mean doesn't everyone punch their dive pals in the face after a dive? *joke*

So when we went in for the second dive I was now diving as part of a three with Gill and Isaac. They were doing skills while I was pottering about looking for anything. Then at 30m I saw a rock move. "Nope, that's not a rock it's a stonefish. No! That's not a stonefish it's an octopus!" I thought,  In one motion I swept up my camera with my right hand, rattled my shaker with my left and drew Isaac and Gill over. 

It was a whopper! Changing colour, receding into it's hole, I thought it was going to disappear from view, but then it paused to look at me, it took pity and let me take a picture. "My little octopussy" I thought.

It's New Years Eve (or Hogmanay as we call it Scotland), if diving in 2015 starts as well as it ended I'll be happy. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR FOLKS, HAPPY NEW YEAR.

My little octopussy

Wacko-paco

Woody

Anemone fish

Bicolour Parrotfish

Swimming through

Air in the hold

Starry puffer

Glassfish (or Red Sea dwarf sweeper)

Gill.I.Am and the wreck