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.