(by
Bob Humphreys, Lisa Bedard & Kevin Hopton)
Bob:
“I
was looking forward to diving St Abbs as it was one of those sites regularly
visited by our club that I had not experienced. St Abbs has stunning scenery
both above and below water. The rocks of the headland are primarily a
combination of soft red sandstone and much harder volcanic rock. St Abbs Head
juts out into the North Sea and catches the tidal flow in both directions twice
a day. This movement coupled with wave action carves the rock into walls,
tunnels, gullies, and archways. Coupled with 10 to 15 meters of visibility
underwater it makes St Abbs perfect for diving.”
After
an uneventful trip up the A1 we arrived at Scoutscroft holiday centre in plenty
of time to pitch our tents in the most accommodating corner of the camping
field. Dave , Paul, Kevin and I were not diving until the next day so had plenty
of time to relax and share a beer or two at the local pub. Dinner had been
booked there previously by Jim and Greeba who organised the trip superbly.
11
am Saturday, the time to meet up with our dive boat, could not come quickly
enough. She was a converted fishing boat with plenty of room. The boats’
sides, however, were pretty high making entry and exit interesting. Entry into
the water was by way of a forward dive or backward somersault. Exiting entailed
lifting fins out of the water for our skipper, Peter, to take off before
climbing a ladder back into the boat.
I
had thought, at this point, to describe each dive as they happened. I found
myself writing hundreds of words and was nowhere near to finishing. So, to
generalise, the diving totally lived up to expectations, visibility underwater
was some of the best I have seen in the UK. The marine life, in the form of soft
coral and anemones was particularly beautiful, sea urchins; sun stars and
brittle stars were everywhere. I have never seen such a colony of starfish as
the brittle stars. There were literally thousands, all anchoring to the rock by
a couple of tentacles and waving the others about to catch anything that might
be passing. They really did look like a field of grass as there were so many.
Tyes
tunnel was a dive to remember. It was diving into a rather dark looking hole.
This opened out into a spectacular cavern that went completely through the rock.
The exit, bathed in sunlight and covered in soft corals and anemones, was just
begging for a good photographer. Guillemots also accompanied our decompression
stop on this dive.
Sunday
saw the weather take a turn for the worse. Rain, fog and large waves accompanied
us on a wreck dive of ‘The Glanmire’. Kitting up took a while as I was
feeling decidedly queezy along with several others. Our first divers were
already descending the shot line before Steve and myself were anywhere near
ready. It was about this time I heard Peter our Scottish captain sharing a few
expletives over the radio. Another dive team also wanted to dive. He came out of
the wheelhouse saying, ‘the beggars wanted to drop another shot while we had
divers down’. He had not too politely been inviting them to share our shot
line. This dive group from North Wales were to prove decidedly dodgy. ‘The
Glanmire’ was at around 30 meters, again in very good visibility. A torch was
only needed when peering under or into the wreckage. A diver from this other
group, during the diving, latched himself onto Paul and Kevin when his own buddy
abandoned their dive. Kevin will describe their heroics a bit later on.
Shortly
after they landed back at St Abbs an ambulance had to be called for another
member of their group who was suffering from the bends.
Kevin
thoroughly deserved the thanks he received from them, but this seemed woefully
inadequate for preventing what could have been a very nasty incident that might
have ruined all our weekends. A debating point afterwards was the use of octopus
set ups on a thirty meter wreck. The offending divers had not left enough air in
either of their cylinders to cope with the incident. Kevin and Paul were both
using pony cylinders as back up and had ample air to reach the surface. I know
what I would rather be using.
Unlike
the Wales group, who had to wait for their unfortunate diver to reappear from
the pot before going home, our weekend could not have been better. Jim and
Greeba’s organisation was superb. Our thanks to them for all the hard work
they put in.
There
was one unfortunate incident however. It had nothing to do with diving but
everything to do with snoring, not mine I hasten to add. An interloper at the
campsite set up his tent almost on top of Pim and Pascale’s tent. This was bad
enough, but I could hear him snoring from three tents away. Pim in an attempt to
sleep stuffed tissue in his ears that even a doctor could not budge the next
day……
All in all though a great weekend was had by everyone and it was good to see so many divers from our club enjoying it safely.”
Kevin
about his rescue dive with Paul:
“This must surely rate as one of the most eventful dives Paul & I have
ever done, and we have over 600 completed between us! The site was on the 30m
wreck of the Glanmire, St Abbs at the end of June.
There were two boats putting divers in the water, on a common shot-line
– ourselves on ‘Selkie’ and one other, ‘Lady Kate’ or something
similar. Paul and myself descended
the shot-line and at about 12m passed another unknown pair whom I figured were
decompressing. We paid them little attention.
On the seabed near the boilers, which are the must prominent feature of
what remains of the Glanmire, we make our usual checks and set-off to explore.
After a few minutes, I got a tug on a fin and looked around to see
another diver whom I didn’t recognise at all.
The
advantage of common diver training shone though here as I was able to determine
that he wanted to join us to make a trio – pointing to each of us, three
fingers, then two index fingers placed together.
“Has
your buddy gone up?” – point, index fingers placed together, thumb-up.
“Yes”
– OK signal.
Paul
and I went with the flow and took the stranger on board (dubbed Eric later) –
I decided that hand-signals could not say “Won’t your buddy wonder where you
are after half an hour?” We had
previously met Eric on the shot line and later found out that his buddy had
problems clearing her ears and aborted the dive, so for a while Eric was on his
own, hence his search for another pair to dive with – apparently he had
mistaken us for another of his own group.
What he should have done was surface with his buddy and aborted his
dive.
The
dive continued as a three – not the best number for a buddy pair, and
certainly not in the plan Paul & I had hatched 20 minutes earlier on board
‘Selkie’.
Come
the time, I indicated to ‘Eric’ that we would be ascending on a delayed
surface marker buoy, and he indicated that he understood. Up we went the three
of us and everything was going swimmingly until 25m.
Coming straight towards us was another stranger buddy pair wrapped from
head to toe in line and waving at us. Immediately
we feared that lines would cross and get hopelessly tied-up – a state of
affairs we fervently wished to avoid at all costs.
So the three of us swam away from them. But they still kept coming
towards us, the girl now indicating, not to wave us away, but more of a chopping
at the throat – out of air! Her
buddy trying in vain to disentangle the line did not appear to be assisting in
this respect! Acquiring an extra buddy was, as I have said earlier, not in
the plan at all so these two guys had most definitely not read the script!
Realising
what was happening, I handed the SMB reel to ‘Eric’ to continue the ascent
with Paul while I swam over to the distressed pair to render assistance, with
Paul & Eric nearby. My pony
regulator was duly donated and we got ourselves together – now the OOA diver
was sorted (although her eyes were
very wide open, to her credit she did not panic) , my concern turned to
controlling the ascent (no CBL
possible here on the casualty’s’ BC) and getting the line cleared.
The buddy’s attempts to untangle us were fairly ineffective and I tried
to get him to cut the line – a while later I saw a knife being wielded but
don’t know if it was used in anger at all – anyway we were fortunate not to
have the additional problem of being trapped.
Although my computer racked-up an ascent warning at one point, we did not shoot uncontrollably to the surface, and as far as I could determine, the ascent was not an unmitigated disaster, indeed I was able even to put in up to a minute of deco at 6m – remember that we had all just done a 30m plus dive and I certainly didn’t want to be potted again – once is quite enough thank you! Once on the surface I secured the casualty and hailed their boat. Paul & ‘Eric’ surfaced shortly after.
Lisa:
“It’s hard to explain what it looks like down there if you’ve never
been, but I’ll try. You drop in over the side of the boat (in my case you do
a very undignified fall-over-the-side manoeuvre) and the water is a deep green
colour. You go down through the green until the bottom eventually comes into
view. Here it is absolutely covered in Brittle Stars, which are little skinny
starfish with a coloured stripe down the middle of each of their hairy legs.
They are clustered so
close together that there is only room for their bodies to be on the bottom
and their legs wave upwards in the water. Sometimes you see them less closely
spaced and they slide slowly along the seabed. Amongst the brittle stars you
see occasional Dahlia Anemones in pink or orange or white. They look
like
what they sound like – round frilly flowers on the sandy bottom. As you
approach the shallower water, large boulders appear, that are absolutely
covered in all
kinds
of life. On one side there will be a mass of soft corals known as “dead
man’s fingers” because that’s kind of what they look like – swollen,
white blobs attached to the rock. When they are feeding they extend hundreds
of feathery bits and appear to be all furry. Amongst the dead man’s fingers
you get various yellow soft corals, sea squirts that look like mini light
bulbs and hundreds of other varieties of small life. Tiny shrimp live there,
and miniscule crabs. If you look closely you can pick out the occasional sea
slug – much prettier than it’s land counterpart – grey or white and
frilly. On the exposed faces there’ll be groups of Plumose anemones – a
fat stalk with what looks like a feather boa on top – in orange and white
shades – they are absolutely beautiful! If you shine your torch into the
gaps between and under the boulders you find various inhabitants –
squat-lobsters (a bit like a small crayfish in bright red and blue), crabs
of various types, Lobsters if you’re lucky. One or two people even saw
Octopus and Wolf Fish (very ugly fish) this trip. Occasionally you’ll see a
fish or two swimming about: Pollack are thin and silvery with a protruding
lower lip, Ballan Wrasse have a cute, puppy-ish look about them and will get
quite close if you hold your breath so that your exhaled bubbles don’t scare
them. If you pay attention you might see a flat-fish called a Top-knot draped
over a rock, looking at you with his one eye facing upwards (or stuck to the
underside of a rock with his one eye facing downwards!). As you ascend back
through the green water there are jellyfish everywhere. Big round moon-jellies
with the four circles in the middle, Lion’s mane jellies – a jelly-pile of
white and orange-brown with long, stinging tentacles, little Comb Jellies with
red and blue neon pulses striped through them. Very lucky divers might have a
seal for company on the way up, or see the Guillemots diving down to meet
them.