Trip Report : Conger Alley, Loch Long (17/11/2013)

Alarms … Damn Alarms

0500 – beep, beep, BEEP, BEEP! And …. snooze!
0530 - beep, beep, BEEP, BEEP! I really should get up now. Breakfast consisted of coffee and cinnamon pancakes. Coldwater diving is extremely tiring, so a solid breakfast is always needed! I absolutely love cinnamon, so my pancakes are always laced with it.

I met two fellow divers, Steven White and Gene at the clubhouse and got the gear loaded up and we were off for 630. It was a gorgeous morning on the Loch, when you imagine Scotland in your minds eye, this is probably what you are thinking of!

The team arrived in three vehicles and assembled on the Loch Long shore for a team photo:

I was hoping to get my weight checked out for diving in the sea. In the past I’ve always attached every bit of weight I had and just hoped, but always sank sufficiently! This time I wanted to be a bit more disciplined about it. I’m also feeling very dived up from my Malta trip, so I want to get in a gas (trimix) dive in very soon. So I also wanted to get used to the feeling of having a stage on again. Carrying a stage isn’t difficult, but it can just make a few things a bit more difficult, such as just kitting up, reading your SPG etc., so its worth practising.

I was using my euro cylinders twinset with an aluminium 80 stage bottle. This will be what I am using on my trimix dive if I feel good to do it.

Dive #1

Max Depth : 30.3m
Dive Time : 40 mins

Dive #2

Max Depth : 20.5m
Dive Time : 29 mins

Dive Log:

The shore of Loch Long is very rocky so you don’t need to worry about sinking in, I’ve been on beaches where it is steep and each step you take results in you sinking in the stones half as far as each step you take making it tiring. That isn’t the case here. There are a few rocks which are OK for kitting up on, but it is a tad awkward. Getting a buddy to help certainly makes life easier. I personally didn’t put my fins on prior to walking in and I think that was a good idea, there are tall seaweed plants near the entry which you could easily get caught in and trip. The ground slowly runs down into the water which makes entry easy.

I dragged my stage in with me and then dropped it on the sea bed while I put my fins on, once the fins were on through a bit of contorting I got the stage strapped on and sank a few more inches.
My buddy was Stewart.

We dropped down and swam down the slope right down to 30m. Down here it was absolutely pitch black, no ambient light whatsoever. Stewart had been having problems with his primary light so was using his backup, and I was used my 21W HID. Swimming along the “bottom reef”, I was pleasantly shocked at how much fauna there was down here. I didn’t have a camera with me, but Googling, I found some pictures to explain:

Anemones (From divernetxtra.com)

The anemones looked beautiful, hundreds everywhere a light pink/purple colour.

Buckie Whelks (from Wild Ocean Photography)

Mixture of organisms (from Wild Ocean Photography)

Moving up from 30m we slowly worked our way along the reef at 15-20m, we looked around boulders and we ended up finding two Congers! The head was easily the size of a small plate, so I daren’t imagine where the body must be and how big it is! In fact we also found a whole host of shrimp hiding under a rock. Now I remembered that Stewart had said that people often grabbed the shrimp and ate them, I’m not a big seafood fan, but I thought I’d try and grab one for chuckles but couldn’t. When I then dropped down to have a look there was a sodding big Conger in there! Got away lucky with that (and all my fingers!).

The starfish are quite massive, the ones in Malta were very slender and perhaps the size of your hand, the ones in the Loch were most definitely bigger than your hand and they had a thick body and arms. Quite cool!

There were also these, white tree like things too:

Another thing that struck me is the number of seashells there are! When I was in Malta, I was expecting to see lots of shells, I had hoped to bring a few home, but no, almost none and I certainly didn't find any even worth picking up, but here? Hundreds of them!!!

We spent most of the dive just bumbling about. There isn't a massive amount too see. Its a dive site that you should do, and I've been recommended to go back and do it as a night dive.

I'm not able to do the normal comprehensive narrative that I normally do, this was my first time to the site so I can’t recall any major navigational features.

Malta Dive Holiday–Day 8

Day 8 – Friday – Return to Home

Morning

My flight was an evening one so I still had most of the day that I could do something with so I had booked a half-day southern Malta excursion. The excursion took me to the Limestone Museum, temples and the Blue Grotto.

Malta Limestone Heritage

The Limestone Heritage is a museum which is an audio guided tour after watching a short video. As part of the museum an orchard/gardens has been established which makes the place very beautiful.

Blue Grotto

Next we went to Zurrieq to see the beautiful Blue Grotto.

I also strolled down the hill after spotting a Divewise truck to see who was here - it was Darryl, Alia, Ty and Jack. I only had a short while so said hello, and goodbye! And went back up to a cafe to enjoy an ice cream!

I also held a VERY large owl and eagle.

Temples

Our final stop today was to visit the Temples. These are apparently the oldest in Malta.

Returning to my hotel to pack, it was then a sad time waiting for my transfer to take me to the airport and ultimately back home to Scotland.

Dive Report : Divewise House Reef Night Dive

Location:

The house reef is through a gate about 30 yards from Divewise.
 

Dive Team

Neville (Guide), TBD, TBD and Chris Armstrong.

Dive log:

I had always imagined Malta to have seas that are teaming with life and I wasn’t disappointed by the past four days of diving, so I had always expresed an interest to do a night dive. I figured that the beautiful wildlife I see during the day would be supported by the beautiful wildlife at night.

I was diving with an instructor “Nev” and he was taking two Dutch students on their Night Adventure Dives. The weather today had completely changed compared to the last few days, but by this time it was quite reasonable. The swell on Divewise’s side of the bay was still quite significant so we walked across the road, and through the pool area of the Dragonara Hotel. Unfortunately it is 8pm so no fine young ladies laying at the poolside to be impressed by these four fine men hunking dive gear past them. Well, three fine men and one idiot in a twinset!

I must admit, I had some reservations with this dive – but for no real reasons. I had two main ones, firstly I had done two “big” dives earlier in the day on the Rozi and the P29 (dives with 60 minute run times with a max depth of about 35m each) so I was slightly weary of adding a third dive which would be very shallow (basically I was thinking that I would bend myself because the off-gassing I am currently going through wuold be forced back into solution in my body, pass around through my lungs and then come out of solution where they shouldn’t!)

My second reservation was that I was getting cold. Again, the diving I had earlier today were long dives and had sapped heat out of me. I didn’t feel cold at the time, and even during the surface interval where we got absoluted poured on I still didn’t feel cold.

But when I put on my wet wetsuit again, that was when I started to feel chilled. With these reasons bouncing in my head I was ummming and ahhhing. I also thought, bugger it, I can save 30 euros too! I decided sod it, lets go for it, I’ll do an ultra slow ascent at the end and keep relaxed.

Jumping in actually got me warmed up for a while!

Nev was using what looked like a Greenforce lamp, I’ve seen those in the past and they are reasonably impressive, ideal for a night dive because they tend to illuminate large areas (also good for video too). I was very interested to see how it would compare to my HID 21W (I was hoping privately to put it to shame! Who doesn’t want the brightest light?). Just before we descended the two Dutch divers asked me if I was going to turn my light on, I said that I would once we were down so that I knew the light head would have lots of water around it. Now my battery burns for about 4-5 hours, but its been funny with me recently, once the battery is down to about 50%, it starts being an awkward and won’t light. So I’d given it a quick charge at Techwise and crossed my fingers when I reached back to flick the canister light switch ….. OK here we go, tilting the lamp to be pointing to wards me so that I could see if the spark caught .. and flick, the spark flew and took! Bang, now its time to light this sea up!

30 seconds later, the bulb is at full temperature and 21W of HID goodness is flooding the sea!

Ned firstly did some basic navigation with the Dutch, I had to hold position while they swam out and back, after that Ned took us on a nice long tour of the reef.

There wasn’t that much to see. The highlight was certainly finding a very stupid Moray Eel. Why was it stupid? Well it was sat there with its mouth open .. and a fish was dancing in and out of it – it didn’t bite. The fish then swam off and a new one came along, again it was dancing in and out of its mouth.Now I did think maybe it’s a parasitic animal that is cleaning the Moray. But it wasn’t. So the fish starts to leave the mouth of the Moray, get a bit clear THEN the Moray decides to go for it, that lucky fish was saved by mere millimetres! Ned and I sounded like a football stadium when a shot misses the goal with an almighty “ohhhhhhhhh!”

I was still on the hunt for an elusive octopus and still haven’t found one which is a bit disappointing, but still very happy end to my holiday of diving!

We spent about an hour in the water floating around. If it is your first night dive then it is interesting and worth doing, after the climax of diving the P29, nothing could compare.

Dive Report : P29, Malta

About the wreck:

The ship was scuttled on 14 August, 2007, at Cirkewwa, just off the north-west coast, near the ferry terminal. Also known as the Boltenhagen, P29 was an East German minesweeper before being commissioned by the Maltese Navy in 1996 as a patrol boat.
 
The wreck is about 170m offshore, between Cirkewwa Point and Lantern Point, near the popular Rozi wreck. 

(from Divernet).

Patrol boat P29 was a Kondor I Class former Minesweeper and Patrol Boat that was scuttled as a dive site in 2007 off Ċirkewwa, Malta. It was built by Peenewerft shipyard to patrol the river banks between the East and West Germany and then was also used as a minesweeper for the East German Navy under the name Boltenhagen.

It was purchased by Malta in 1992 along with its sister ships P30 (formerly Ueckermuende) and P31 (formerly Pasewalk), and was used to secure the Maltese coast against smuggling and border control operations. It was sunk as an attraction for divers on 14 August 2007 to serve as a diving site. The P29 is 51 metres long and lies at a depth of around 35 metres but the entire dive may be done at 25 meters. (from Wikipedia)

Location

The image below shows the underwater terrain about the wreck. According to the sketch, we used "route 1", which is probably the shortest and easiest to get to the wreck (from Malta.com)

Team:

Darrell, Lolke, Alia, Svenke, Chris.

Dive Log:

We entered the water in Susie's Pool, the swell had picked up so Alia and I who both had effectively two tanks to manage were getting thrown about a lot as we got our fins on and comfy. Once we had dropped down to about 2-3m it was fine. Swimming out over the reef, Darrell lead us out into the blue.

Jumping in!

I love the Maltese water, it is just a luminous blue. Quite literally the colour of the blue in the sketch above.

Darryl

We were swimming out at about 10-12m, it takes about 5 minutes of swimming in the blue. It sounds daft, but just swimming across nothing-ness is actually really nice. For me, this dive is part of my first dive holiday, so I'm enjoying 25 degree water, 50m visibility for the first time, so even seeing nothing is quite nice! Obviously I wouldn't want to spend 50 minutes doing this, but for 5-10 mins I'm more than happy!

The wreck starts to form directly ahead of us, it starts out as a gloomy dark form, but slowly the detail comes into view. The wreck is over 50m long and you can easily see the bow as you are approaching from the stern. We swam along the port edge above the wreck and then once we passed the bridge we started to descend down towards the bow. A large machine gun is mounted forward which Lolke stood behind.

Looking from the bow aft is an impressive view.

Coming around the bow on the starboard side towards the central tower, I can see a large hatch, the team are all advanced divers and Darrell is more than happy for us penetrating the wreck, I turn around to see Alia, and I ask her if she's OK to enter ... she's a sidemount girl so its practically implied that she will want to, but she responded with a yes. I probably should have asked the entire team, but I must admit, I was far too excited and I knew they would have wanted to so ..... IN WE GOOOOO!!! Entering the hatch I can see straight through to the other side, no way I'm going that way, I've come to penetrate.

I turn to the right and enter a room that is forward. One thing that occurred to me is that these rooms are comfortable to swim through, but they are not that big if you had to work in it. The rooms have obviously been gutted of all valuable electronics so they are at their "full size". Poor seamen who have to work in here ....

This room is L-shaped, and goes to the left. I am hoping it doesn't end because otherwise the five man team will all be in here and me pinned at the back! Thankfully it doesn't, there is a hatch on the floor, I look down and see a room and I'm off down it!

Throughout my entire penetration, I was very much like a kid in a candy store my mind was quite literally going "ooh *in a truly girly way* there's a hole over there, I wonder what's through there? Lets go see!!". After about 5 minutes two things suddenly hit me:

1. I've no idea what the way out is as I didn't lay a line and my excitment overwhelmed my memory recall at that point - aided by 35m worth of narcosis (to be honest, I'd gone through maybe 10 rooms and made an equal number of turns - I probably could have found my way out in a non-stressful situation)
2. I've been going down a lot - my MOD is about 38M, what depth are we at? I hadn't looked at my BT once during all of this.

Issue number 1 was resolved the moment I thought of it as I came out into a wide cargo hold with a clear roof opening - so thats good. Issue number 2 - hmmm 36M, OK thats not too bad, especially when that was based on a PP02 of 1.4, not that I would want to be working on a higher PP02 but the margin is there.

Better check my SPG too, how much gas have I burned through? 115 bar left, ah thats OK, oodles of gas.

The back of the ship had a compartment that had the roof off (or did it even exist?), so we popped out of that to get a view of the derrier. I then saw Alia skimming around the bottom of the hold, so I dropped back down to follow where she was off to.

I saw her head into the port-forward corner of the hold, dropping in and looking that way I couldn't actually see her, there was however a hatch. Figuring she had gone through I thought I'd better follow her so off I went. The hatch went into a passageway that worked upwards at a 45 degree angle. Then corridor levelled off to a corridor that ran port-starboard. I had no idea which way she had gone and couldn't see her, so I turned left to exit the wreck and then came around back to the stern where I saw the group. And Alia.... right, so how the hell did she get there?? Oh well, the team is together so it doesn't matter.

Our current dive time was approaching 30 mins with at least 20 mins of that on the wreck. I was attempting to keep a track of average depth in my head, with that and factoring in the reduced NDL from the previous dive I felt we were somewhere very close to it.

Darrell gestured to me that we needed to start working our way up, so that unfortunately meant the end of the dive. Or rather, the end of the wreck dive. Darrell lead us back to the reef at about 15m and we had a good look around.

Very funny moment was  when Darrell and Alia were holding hands as they swam! You can see it in the video.

We came to Susie's pool to start what we thought was a 5m safety stop. I must admit I'd lost track of the numbers in my head. With a square profile its far easier to work out average depths and limits. But these profiles we did today was far more "gradual" on the ascent and descent and I was flummoxed.

Darrell was doing a quick check around everyone and he was having an underwater debate with Svenke. At one point I saw a gesture of a closed fist with the little finger out.

 (From liveabout.com)

Hang on, that means deco. Nah I'm a tech diver so I probably have a different meaning for out. I hovered close by, sneaking a look at Svenke's SPG, he had about 70 bar so that isn't too much of an issue. I looked at Darrell, I gave the "question" gesture, and then the deco symbol (shown above left). Darrell responded with a point at Svenke and the gesture for "1" and "6" .... hang on, Svenke has 16 mins of deco, I responded by asking for confirmation that Svenke had 16 mins of deco time ... I got a nod back.

Right then, lets have a bimble - got plenty of time to burn!

There was a ledge nearby, I went under that and looked up at the corals and animals hiding underneath, so beautiful colours, mostly reds and oranges.

I'd been on the hunt for an octopus ever since day 1 when Alan mentioned he sees them on the house reef and I hadn't seen one. Even missed one when diving at the Inland Sea. Susie's Pool had large boulders everywhere, perfect hiding places for an octopus in my mind!

I was rooting around like a little ferret looking in and around every crack and boulder. I had to be very mindful of the fireworms

Video

Svenke has produced some great video of the dive and is available on YouTube:

Dive Report : Rozi, Malta

About the wreck

The Rozi was a tug boat that was scuttled in 1992 as an underwater attraction for tourists on submarine tours. The submarine trips no longer operate, but this wonderful little tug boat continues to sit perfectly upright on a sandy bottom within a rocky amphitheatre. The ship is now well colonized and all areas of the superstructure and bridge work are accessible to divers. Bear in mind though that this is a deepish wreck and not for novice divers.

The deck and rails support a healthy growth of sea firs and hydroids, so the wreck is becoming a magnet for lots of colourful nudibranchs. Well worth taking the camera in to do some macro photography, but equally scenic for wreck shots too. A black and white image of the wreck won a local Maltese photographer an international prize in 2012!

Surrounding the ship are thousands of fish, with chromis, bream and sand smelt predominating. You will also see amberjack (Seriola dumerili) and bonito (Sarda sarda), which ‘buzz’ the shoals of small fish. The flat sandy seabed around the wreck is covered in huge anemones (Condylactis auratica).

(from Gozo Diving)

(from Malta.com)

Location:

Dive Log

For the Rozi, the best entry point is a giant stride entry from next to the lighthouse type structure. Its a nice size jump and with a twinset on you can make a good splash! Darrel went in first, followed by Lolke and Svenke. I was helping Alia get her stage sorted, she threw the second one in the water and I jumped in with Alia just behind me.

Alia dropped straight down to pick up her stage and get sorted. She had ran a tad late this morning so hadn't been able to get her gear rigged up how she would have liked at Divewise, so amazingly she was sorting out her bands as we swam!

We dropped down to the reef at 2-3m and Darrell lead us out in to the blue abyss. The wall of the reef dropped off below us down to the seabed at about 30m but we carried on swimming out at about 10m.

After about 5 minutes I could see an extremely large anchor below us, it has been placed to help with navigation to the wreck, I just followed the fins with the smiles on!

As you arrive to the wreck, you should hit the bow first, we swam over the bow, whilst Alia went right down on the seabed! Svenke took a minor detour while he shot a little video, he went down the port side aftwards whilst the rest of us with Darrell swam  on the starboard side.

Svenke entered the cabin and found a small WC room, with the toilet still intact and looking quite good! And swam straight through the wreck to meet us on the starboard side.

Darrell lead us aft to the stern, we dropped right down to see the propeller, or rather where the propeller should have been as it has been removed, but the massive rudder is still present. We continued our orbit of the wreck moving forward up the port side now, I entered a cabin from the port deck. The corridor heads inwards and then makes a turn to the right with some stairs, heading down the stairs on the right takes you into the cargo hold.

The cargo bay is wide open so you can have a good nosey about, I then came up and out and swam along the port deck to the wheel house. The wheel house is a good size and the temptation to stand like a skipper is strong!

Coming back around to the bow, you can see through port holes and storage hatches that there is a storage compartment below deck in the bow, but I couldn't see a way at it.

After doing several laps around the Rozi, we had been on the wreck for about 20 minutes so it was time to start ascending. Darrell started to lead us off the stern of the tug towards the reef, Alia and I were at the back and we saw some lights off to the port of the Rozi. At first I didn't understand what I was seeing, but afterwards Alia said that it was Ty and John coming over from the P29 on their units.

Leaving the wreck, we swam out across the blue with Darrell leading to the reef, ascending to 20m we met the reef. This part of the reef looks very much like an underwater wheat field with large feilds of seaweed swaying in the strong current.

Moving up the reef further, we came across a feature known as the Cirkewwa Arch. It is a small version of the Azure Window, but underwater. Beautiful corals and fish are all along the arch. Behind the Arch is a bay which we ascended out of to about 16m.

Swimming along the coast, we are swimming along Adrian's Reef.

With the reef wall on our left we came across a really nice swim through, a cosey little cave approximately 10-12m long.Coming around the bay we enter Susie's Pool. A nice shallow reef starting at about 7-10m working its way up gently to the exit/entry point - it's a beautiful place to help pass safety stop and decompression time if necessary.

Video

Svenke has produced some great video of the dive and has put it on YouTube: