Martin Burnard(Offline)

0745 this morning saw Little Pete and myself getting in the water for a DIR twosome shore dive.

This is a lovely shore dive in Plymouth (10 minutes from my home!), that allows a 32m max depth to be enjoyed with abundant life. Let me tell you more.

A short stroll from the car park and down some steps takes you to the waters edge where the entry is easy and the bottom is shingle and pebble, with 2m depth about 2m from the steps, superb for a final check before setting off in ernest.

This morning was a lovely calm morning, cloudy and no wind, the swell was about 25mm (1 inch) and that was if we looked very hard! Visibilty was looking good with 8- 10m easily clear. Water temperature was a little fresh at 7 degrees. So checks done we head off directly South. This short swim is initially over a pebble bed with a selection of weeds growing some life in the way of small crabs, wrasse, and snakelock anemonies, as the it shelves gently done to 8m and we are further away from the shore the sea bed becomes finer grained down to sand then silt, the life varies as we progress with the kelp and weeds becoming less abundant as it has fewer points to attach to.

After 5 minutes it becomes noticable that the shelf is now steepening rapidly and once we move beyond a depth of 8m it becomes more of a wall covered in silt and various worms. This part of the dive always seems to require a decent torch even in strong daylight and as we descend to 32m it is best described as gloomy with only afew spiney starfish, an abundance of serpula vermicularis (sorry no common name as far as I am aware), and very little else obvious.

At the bottom of the wall we turn to our right and follow the wall keeping it on our right shoulder, we are accompanied by some large curios pollack and a ballan wrasse which seems to keep us insight. Visibility at this point is still about 8m and with a more powerful torch (we were both using 10w HID, one Halcyon, one Salvo) may have been greater. Now as we follow the wall its orientation changes and so does the life, boring sponges become common, slender sea pens reach out from the silt, eadible crabs appear, large sea toad spider crabs are present, some very large prawns can be seen hiding in nooks and crannies, a conger can be found hiding, we follow the wall past a mooring block, a bike tied to a post ( yes a bike tied to a post!) with a sex toy on the saddle and a set of phone cables (they are the way home).

A time check reveals we are about 5 minutes ahead of our schedule so we continue on for a few metres nosing into the holes before returning to the cables for our slow ascent.

The ascent is probably the prettiest part of this dive with life just flourishing everywhere. We spend our time enjoying the selection of various coloured Jewel anemonies, the abundant oaten pipe hydroids with two types of nudibranch (coryphella browni and poycera faeroensis), the ross corals, deadmans fingers, an acanthodoris pilosa nudibranch (I think), the bright orange of esperiopsis fucorum (a sponge) is everywhere, Sea orange sponges are scattered, a few tompot blenneys peer at us cautiously, a two spot goby was desturbed ( it was in breeding colours, irradescent blue), and a nest of dogfish (four we think).

As we move in shallower following the ables we reach a silt bed with very little of what we have seen so far, instead we have a host of auger shells with small hermit crabs in residence, netted whelks searching for food, and a fine scattering of eel grass.

We continue our dive into the shallows where I decide to do two things at once (yes stupid I know!), re-adjust my fin straps and move some air out of my feet. Now the current was running quite strongly at this point and we are in 6m of water. So roll over pul fin spring up my heel invert roll out of it dump some air swim back down, and then think where am I, I had moved about 8m inn that short time. Fortunately Little Pete was watching with a look that said "thats amusing" and took us back to the cable.

We continued our dive in and surfaced after 54 minutes of marine magic. All this and 10 minutes from home. 250,000 people in Plymouth and very few know what is on their doorstep.

Even more fun is that I will be diving it again on tonights high tide. Ok its dark, but new life will be out to play!

So thanks to my buddy - Little Pete, and thanks to Mother Nature!

Martin

Little Pete(Offline)

Righto, Martin has done the good bits so I'll fill in with a few other odds and pieces.

Let's start with my forgetting I only had one 1st stage (my twins are being driven down for the Wednesday meet up) and I'd forgotten to mention this to Martin so I could borrow his spare. He'd brought Brian's twins and wing so I went a bit possibly non-DIR at this point. I mean.....if I just closed the left post, opened the isolator and mounted my singles reg on the right post then it would be like a 24L single really

Anyway my dodgy equipment usage aside the dive was fantastic. Firstly I have to make a mention of the temperature. 8 degrees for 54 minutes left my hands quite cold and me slightly shivering right at the end. I was wearing my PB 400grm, 100grm booties and 3mm gloves. Compare this to my last dive wearing the same which was 4 degrees in Gildy and I was numb and really shivering by 30 mins. So all good by me, roll on summer.

I'll make a comment on the two torches as I found it quite interesting and Martin has already covered the sea life and dive in more detail than I could.

I've got the 4.5ah 10w Salvo with an EKPP reflector and Martin has the Proteus 3 10w focusable Halcyon. The beam colour of the two torches was markedly different. Mine has the slightly purple beam and the H torch was very white compared. Brightness was similar though I would say the H edged it slightly (although Martin said his torch was a bit brighter than Brian's version of the same model so it might be just his). Colour at the spot was a touch different and probably a reflection of the beams where Martins was slightly whiter and mine appeared a touch yellow by comparison.
The torch designs are very different with mine having a full sized (same as 18/21w) body and reflector and the H torch being much dinkier. The batteries differ with a 3ah (2 hour burn) Lead acid for the Halcyon and a 4.5ah NiMH (4 hour burn) for the Salvo. Both have advantages and disadvantages when compared and this has been done before so I won't go into it. I thought it might be nice to have some comparison between the smaller torches (since not all of us can afford the big 18s) as the 10w Salvo is not a commonly seen beast so there's not much talk about it.

I had fun using Brian's twinset as he has Fabers and I'm used to the Euro/Heiser length cylinders. I thought there might be issues with head heavy tipping (given their reputation). To my relief they trimmed out perfectly (ish) with just my normal weight belt on. I had one or two feet light moments but that's because I was running my suit a bit less than tight due to fear of the cold. Still good fun to have now tried out Heisers, Euros and Fabers and had no probs with them (apart from the fact my trim is not quite completely flat all the time yet).

Martin hasn't mentioned the other divers who we saw on the silt patch (before the current dragged us when he was sorting his fin). I mention only because it was a perfect highlight of something from the fundies book.

The guy nearest us was near to the silt with pretty good trim. It was a shame both his console and octupus reg were dragging through the silt. It reminded me of that phrase about not knowing if your occy is going to be full of sand because it wasn't stowed properly etc etc.

Anyway I've got very wordy so I'll leave off with a suggestion that anyone down our way comes for a dive there. Loads of life to see, good conditions and a bunch of DIR folks in the region to fill out a team if needed.