Weymouth Training Trip September 2003

(by Helen Spring)

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The trip to Weymouth was my first UK coastal dive and I was a little nervous as to what it would be like.  Most of the diving that I’ve done has been in beautiful places where I’ve seen the most amazing fish, sharks, turtles, rays – all the really fantastic stuff that you want to see and that made me love diving to start with!

I was a bit concerned that this would put me off diving and that I would just become a holiday diver.  The first UK dive I did was earlier this year – March in fact – in Stoney Cove – and it was bloody freezing!!  3 degrees C to be precise.  So anyway, I was expecting to be cold and not to see much. 

Weymouth was an unexpected surprise!  The water was much much warmer than I expected – I was even able to work on my fading tan between dives!  Visibility wasn’t really comparable to the Barrier Reef or anything but was still pretty good most of the time! 

And I saw some amazing stuff!  There was a 5ft long conger eel that was particularly cool.  To start with I found its tail poking out of a bit of shipwreck.  I was trying to work out what it was and I called my buddy, Ian, over.  He looked at the other end of the wreckage and found its head peering out at us!  I was well impressed!  

I think the conger eel was the highlight but we also saw a whole host of other creatures including a cuttlefish.  Unfortunately I don’t know the names of most of the things I saw, so I’m going to have to do a bit of studying before my next dive! 

Apart from the wildlife, we had another amusing event when we surprised a bunch of sunbathers on the beach by poking our heads out of the water and asking where the boat was!