St Abbs (part 1)
An annual family trip to St Abbs gave me an opportunity to dive with Tony New (a BSAC member who has dived with our club on many trips).
He is an experienced diver and enjoys photography so where better than St Abbs, in fact the photos used are mainly his.
We dived out of Eyemouth with Hartford SAC on Wave Dancer (skipper was Billy).
The conditions were perfect, bright sunlight and very little breeze, however, as we travelled out to the dive sites this changed and the swell and wind picked up, not bad enough to stop diving but just enough to warrant a bit more care when exiting and entering the boat.
The first dive is always a bit of a check dive and we entered, checked weights and descended to visibility of about 10 meters, all looked good. The swell was evident down to about 10 meters which meant that we had to use the disjointed stop and thrust swim to capitalise on the movement and minimise energy use.
Once a bit deeper we headed out round rocks swarming with Plumose Anemones, crabs, starfish etc. In amongst the rocks many smaller fish could be seen darting out and back when scarfed by movement. The large wrasse were in evidence, at one point we saw four all using the same cave.
This started a good weekends diving. we completed three dives on Black Carr entering at different points and investigating. Each dive was different and the third dive proved fruitful in terms of finding Wolf Fish.
Billy decided to take us to Brander Point for our final dive of the weekend. This is an outcrop of rock, which we decided to dive from the far side and make our way round. No seal this time but huge schools of fish and plenty of marine life.
Moving boats for the Monday I caught up with a buddy from Scotland and we had two great dives. A repeat of the Black Carr but we spent ore time at depth gradually making our way out from the rocks into open water. The second was a gentle drift along the coast from Weasel Loch towards Eyemouth, no bobtail squid this time but definitely a good dive.
Dive sites were
- Black Carr
- Anemone Gulley
- Black Carr
- Brander point
- Black carr
- Weasel Loch
Thanks once again to Tony New for the pictures.
