Playing catch-up: four dives later

You may well wonder where I’ve been for the last couple of months. A lot of it was spent in London volunteering at the greatest sporting event in the world; happens every four years, you know the one! I was fortunate enough to be selected as a reporter for the Olympic News Service working on water polo. Water is obviously the connection there to scuba diving, but the rest is a story for a different place.

Prior to that month on dry land where the only water I went in was chlorinated, I did go on a little bimble to Fairylands, somewhere out past Wembury.

Location: Fairylands – Type: Reef – Max Depth: 16m – Length: 27 mins – Surface: Clear

Fairylands - sounds magical doesn’t it? I’m sure it is on a clear day but the sea just wasn’t playing nicely and the vis wasn’t great. It was still a good dive, don’t get me wrong, but after the dream-like visions of the last trip and the disappointment of having a dive cancelled in between the two, I was hoping for more. We went down as a group of about six and skirted around the edge of the reef for a lot of the time, so there wasn’t much marine life to see. A couple of crabs clinging to the reef aren’t to be knocked though. Alas, there’s always next time...or so I thought.

I was quite keen to get back underwater on my return to Plymouth so I joined a boat dive mid-August to Hilsea Point, five miles out around the Noss Mayo area.

Location: Hilsea Point – Type: Reef – Max Depth: 20m – Length: 11 mins – Surface: Sunny

It took around 30 minutes once we’d got to our location for the two other groups to kit up and drop off the boat and our group of three to follow. We fell into the sea (deliberately, of course), located the shot line (a rope with a weight on one end and float on the other to guide you to your dive point) and descended. And descended. And descended. The instructor had almost hit 20 metres (I was hovering at my 18 metre limit just above) and we couldn’t see a thing, barring each other at close quarters. The decision was made (via hand signals and raised eyebrows) to surface. With the obligatory three minute stop at five metres, our ‘dive’ (and I say that loosely) lasted all of 11 minutes. It turns out the shot line had drifted off the reef in the time it had taken us to get in the water and we ended up half a mile from the other groups with only water for company. We interrupted the skipper’s sunbathing session (it was a glorious day) to get back on board and await the return of the other divers. Always look on the bright side and all that though. We may not have seen anything underwater but we were treated to a sunfish dancing in the calm waves off the tail-end of another dive boat. It wasn’t there for long and we couldn’t see much of it but I’m told they’re a marvel of the ocean and I felt lucky to have seen one.

What the sunfish encounter might have looked like underwater

Last weekend’s dive made up for the previous two. This time I headed back to the Mewstone, the location of my first and best boat dive to date.

Location: Mewstone – Type: Reef – Max Depth: 16.1m – Length: 38 mins – Surface: Sunny

The visibility was a good 8 to 10 metres and the sea bed was awash with colour and life from tiny shoals of pretty fish to bigger, uglier (I’m sure their mothers love them) ones. There was the usual array of sea urchins and starfish and crabs. And the pièce de résistance? A lesser spotted dogfish, also known as a small spotted catshark (not overly sure why the name variants). To all intents and purposes these toothy creatures are small sharks. Ours was around 3ft long, possibly smaller accounting for water magnification, but the spotty fella seemed more than happy to swim alongside us for a minute.

A lesser spotted dogfish, or small spotted catshark, similar to ours

The dive was supposed to be a drift dive. The idea is that the current pulls you along so you effortlessly glide enjoying the scenery. That’s the idea. What happened is that myself and my two buddies hadn’t ‘planned the dive’ as you’re taught to do by PADI in your initial training. We’d not dived together as a three before and my last minute vocals for someone to volunteer to lead the party before we entered the water had gone unfounded. I thought we were following buddy two, buddy two thought they were following me (you see the problem), buddy three took to the back of the pack to hold the SMB (a line with an inflatable float attached so your boat can see where you are) and left both of us to it. So we’d made it hard for ourselves by going against the current and were exhausted on surfacing, but we’d learnt our lesson and mutually decided to discuss who would lead next time! The exhaustion was aided by the time holding onto the inflatable SMB in what was becoming a not so calm sea signalling to the boat that we were ready to be picked up before they eventually saw us. I think others were getting on the boat from a different point, but by the time I was dragged on it (I was too tired to help much) I forgot to ask and talk quickly turned to the afternoon’s sightings while the warm September breeze passed us by as we limped (this isn’t an error, the boat was sick) to shore.

I was lucky that one of my buddies on that dive had an underwater camera and whilst he didn’t manage to capture the lesser spotted dogfish, he did get a great shot of a less than lesser spotted...well, me!

A rare species

Comparing this photo to one of a birthday present I received from some good friends a few weeks earlier, with my newly-bought fluorescent yellow mask and snorkel and matching yellow fins (which are just out of shot here), I do in fact greatly resemble a diving smurf.

The birthday diving smurf

I wonder if I should go the whole hog and get a white hood?

The need to do more diving after the extended break led to my second dive in a week one evening after work. I headed back to the point of my Open Water training; a shore dive off the waterfront on Plymouth Hoe.

Location: Waterfront – Type: Shore – Max Depth: 7.6m – Length: 31 mins (6 min interval) – Surface: Clear

We agreed on two dives, surfacing for a few minutes to get our bearings then heading back down to allow one of my buddies (we were a trio) to navigate back to shore to practise his skills. At one point we ended up pretty close to the sea wall...I think he needs to keep working on the navigation!

We came across a number of solo swimmers, your average Joe fish and a few smaller starfish, the norm really, until my buddy, frantically shining his torch at the two of us to stop us continuing, moved aside some kelp to reveal the mother of all starfish! It was white and at least 1.5ft, possibly 2ft wide. So impressed was I that I lost concentration on keeping afloat and almost landed on the poor creature. A frantic manoeuvre later, which might have involved a sideways roll, I’d managed to avoid him and compose myself. The next treat was a dab, which we thought might have come to a sad end on the sea floor but nope, he was just kipping, until he got a rude awakening by my buddy checking his life status! Lucky for him one of my buddies didn’t have a knife on him as he informed us later that he’d not eaten yet and the dab would have looked great next to some chips.

The second of the two dives turned into a night dive pretty soon after descending. I hadn’t been prepared for this but my two far more experienced buddies were, and came prepared with powerful underwater torches. It’s a very surreal feeling being underwater in the dark. It’s peaceful, but there are the moments when the torchlight doesn’t quite suffice and you’re left in an eerie underwater forest of shadows, with kelp blighting your path, more authoritative than in daylight. It’s almost as if they’re the prison guards of the sea and they know they have the upper hand.  

This was a relatively shallow pair of dives and as such I had trouble getting my buoyancy right. When I was closer to the surface (around 4-5m) I just kept floating on up and a few times one of my buddies (a dive instructor) had to grab me by the fin and pull me back down! Possibly more weight needed in shallow water next time. Having said that, I don’t think more weight will help my cause to get back on dry land. The feeling of weightlessness in the water drops like a (forgive the pun) lead weight when you try to stand to climb up the rocks out of the sea. I managed to get one fin off, someone else had to do the other, and just as I started attempt one of the climb I fell over (at the point where I was being told don’t fall, you won’t be able to get up) and ended up on my back with the gas cylinder pinning me down. I must have looked like an upended turtle. I thought boat entries were hard but this was a different experience altogether! Needless to say I required help to safely return to shore. Unfortunately in the diving world ‘I’m a girl’ really doesn’t get you anywhere. I’m going to have to man-up as I continue my scuba-ventures.