An Unexpected Journey Part 1 - 08/05/2014

As regular readers will know, on a previous outing Laura and I scouted out the access to the lesser dived part of St Catherines, Loch Fyne. However, St Catherine's 3 - Bottle Bank is also a much contested site between divers and local residents who rightly have concerns about a minority of divers who persist with antisocial behaviour.

Laura and I had planned to dive the site, but chance comments by Martin and Ben in Aquatron made us wonder if we could keep all camps happy by diving the length of the shore between St Catherine's 2 & 3.St Catherine's 2 being the less contested site that features regularly on this blog.

Our new plan was to build up kit at St Cats 2, drive along the lane to the St Cats 3 entry, I'd drive back to St Cats 2 before walking the 500m back to the kit and Laura. We would then enter the water, dive the reef before heading as far along the shore as our air would safely allow. Still following?

Specifically, we were going in diving to 20m heading NE to the reef, working our way up the reef to 10m, where we would leave the reef and head NE to our distant exit point. At 80 bar we'd start to ascend to 5m and at 40 bar we'd surface.

Our Plan

The plan was set and it appeared as though it had appeased Poseidon himself as a pod of porpoise and a seal frolicked offshore and the tide flowed in our favour.

As we dived we encountered catshark after catshark - I mean loads of them. The dive came alive in a fun way when Laura who was feeling a bit floaty in her new undersuit grabbed what has now become known as her "Gandalf stick". Feeling a bit left out I too grabbed a piece of driftwood and continued our Unexpected Journey.

We almost made it too. We came up about 50m short of the target only to see Fast Ed cruising the lane in his car looking for us or perhaps something more sinister - you never can tell with that boy. We signalled with torches and we chatted from afar as the tide gently swept us to our destination. 

Butterfish

The Gandalf Stick

Catshark

Nudibranch

The distance travelled

A last Gasp Dive - 07/05/2014

Late in the day, while I was still at work, I got a message from Mr Fallsoveralot asking if I fancied a dive. The weather was tolerable I said yes and asked The Zookeeper (who'd been off work all week) to come along too. With a late departure, we headed to the A-Frames for a cheeky dip.

Once there we found a few divers at the site including Sergeant Chris. I got the impression that one of the guys was quite inexperienced when he told me the visibility was really poor and you couldn't see anything. He had also lost his buddy's and swum back to shore alone. I feared the worst after that encounter but we pressed on. 

Mr Fallsoveralot finally managed to put on his own fins for the first time. As all drysuit divers will tell you, the first time you accomplish that task is an achievement. Moreover, he never fell over once, I'll need a new nickname soon. Well done Grant! 

Diving down we found the visibility to between 2-3m - not great, but not what we'd been led to believe. We had  a really pleasant relaxed dive down to 18m for 47 minutes. Not bad for a last minute decision. I never took many pictures.

Starfish

Mr Fallsoveralot

Mr Fallsoveralot & The Zookeeper

Moody Loch Long (This is an unedited picture)

A Record Breaker - 05/05/2014

Today Mr Fallsoveralot and I went to Twin Piers. We've had two abortive attempts to dive it together. However, today was to be the day. The tide was out, and in this state the bottom of the reef is a pretty shallow 19m, but it was perfect for some light hearted exploration.

We had expected this to be a seal dive as when we were kitting up there was a seal frolicking on the surface just out from our entry point. On the dive the only evidence of the seal was a lot of disturbed plumose anemones and some pretty poor visibility (2-3m)

Exploring the reef we found some of my favourite bits of sea life. In particular, a rich abundance of the sea cucumbers - there is a video below of what happens when you disturb one. On top of that we found a couple of conger eels at very shallow depths, a big ballan wrasse and the odd rock cook.

However, today's real diving interest for me came in the form of two new records.

1. lowest ever air consumption - 15.7 litres per minute
2. longest ever dive - 1hr 1minute

Sea cucumber

Shallow conger

Yellow cluster anemone

Feed the Beast - 01/05/2014

The Zookeeper and I headed out on one of our secret missions. The location was Loch Long's Twin Piers - a site I visit often due to convenience. As you may recall, we hadn't been there since the visibility in the loch deteriorated a few weeks ago (To read about it follow this link).

Firework Anemone

This evening,we were diving it for the first time in broad daylight, being that 'night' diving is out of season until October here in Scotland.

En route we had a conversation about how I had mistakenly thought pink spotted sea cucumbers were firework anemones and it was my last trip to this site that made realise I was quite mistaken. Moreover, I learned that the sea cucumbers when disturbed shrivel to almost nothing. It was therefore, strangely serendipitous that once we entered the water and descended down to 15m the first significant thing we'd find would be a small firework anemone.

As we moved towards the reef to find conger eels I began to get a better idea of the reefs formation. Previously I'd only seen it by torchlight. It was a glorious sight to behold. The huge rocks looked magnificent in the green hue and I began to link different part of the site together.

Once we reached the conger hole The Zookeeper produced her bag of chopped mackerel and squid to lure out the beast. Slowly it emerged unsure at first, but knowing the scent of Laura's goodies was too good to resist. We stayed there for about 10 minutes until our shifting had stirred up too much silt to see properly. We then headed off back to shore stopping to marvel at the anemones smothering the rocks.

52 minutes of pleasantly clear, if somewhat cold, diving.

Plumose Anemones

Plumose Anemones

Conger luring

Baked buddy

Burrowing Anemone

Comb jelly

Crab & Common sea star

Big Pier

Strike a Pose - 01/05/2014

I'm often accused of being too aware of when people are pointing a camera at me. However, I do occasionally have the odd photographic disaster. Today I tried to take a photo of myself in front of the Twin Piers using the timer on my camera. This glorious little video was the result.

I must learn to work the camera.

The Loch Long Road to Recovery - 27/04/2014

Panoramic view of A-Frames entry and 29 Steps

Today I had time to sneak in a cheeky dive between spending time with Gill and playing funky bass at church in the evening. As such, Mr Fallsoveralot accompanied me on a dive at the A-Frames, Loch Long. 

As regular West of Scotland divers will know, visibility in Loch Long has been terrible in recent weeks. The cause of this may well be seasonal, but the deterioration also coincides with a series of blasts further up the loch where the UK keeps its nuclear arsenal. As such, Facebook pages and newsgroups have been awash with poor visibility reports including one of my own! We decided with no credible reports in recent weeks we'd take the plunge.

The site was slowly clearing of people by the time we arrived, and a few discussions revealed that at least three BSAC branches had been training. Moreover, my local dive shop, Aquatron, were also running a PADI Openwater course less than 100 yards along the shore. As such I feared that visibility would be poor.

As we entered the water we descended through the halocline with visibility of around 5m. We reached the first A-Frame with visibility of around 4m. Moving from frame to frame as we reached the 3rd frame we passed through a cloud of what I think was our own silt being swept out by the current which reduced visibility to less then 50cm. However, staying close to Mr Fallsoveralot we finned for around 10m and eventually emerged from the cloud and back into some decent viz.

As we returned to shallower water the visibility improved to around 7m.

I never took my camera on the dive, but Grant did. I spotted some nice sea cucumbers amongst the usual selection of critters. Moreover, Mr Fallsoveralot never fell over once. I put it down to him using a dumpy 12l cylinder for the first time.

Sea Cucumber (taken by Grant)

Search & Recovery - 22/04/2014

After Sunday's dive I discovered that I had lost a weight pouch. I don't know if it happened in the water or at some other point. Today I asked Fast Ed and Sergeant Chris if they'd help me look for it. They are very obliging. So, we headed to St Catherine's after work and despite the poor traffic we arrived and kitted up before 8pm - still daylight.

There were other divers onsite - Paul 'The Kingmaker' King and Martin Kerr. The Kingmaker is well known to me - I have on occasions played badminton with him - Martin Kerr however, is a shadowy figure. No-ones quite sure what he does. All we know is that he's some kind of Gandalf of the IT World and mad, keen rebreather diver. By way of contrast, The Kingmaker, is not a rebreather diver, although he has been described as "a well used scrubber". (A little rebreather humour for you there!)

Myself, Fast Ed & Sergeant Chris entered the water as a three and retraced my underwater steps from Sunday heading down to around 25m. Life was plentiful, but I never saw the stars of Sunday's dive, but as you'll see below I took a few pictures. However, I never found my pouch.

Back on the surface, we had a brief chat with The Kingmaker and Gandalf IT before they headed off and we rekitted for a 2nd dive. This time, it was to be a night dive. Fast Ed led us down to the reef (21m) where we again began the conger hunt. We didn't find it, but we did find the big scorpion fish and cushion star - though my camera had packed in by this point. The sea scorpion was enjoying the small shrimp that our torchlight was attracting.

Add in some dogfish - technically making it a shark dive - and we all had a great time. The only down side is my still missing pouch and the late night trip home.

I later heard that The Kingmaker broke his own personal record for Scottish dive longevity - 81 minutes. Gandalf IT only had 10 minutes of scrubber time left, but I'm sure the Kingmaker will happily add to that next week. 

Rock Cook

Spiny Star

Goldsinny

Sea Scorpion