Porthkerris and Raglans Reef - May 06
Theres nothing quite like our English hedgerows with the amount of flora and fauna that make their homes in them. May is probably one of the best times with all the new growth. I certainly thought so when I went to Cornwall last weekend.
I was meeting a group of divers from the Yorkshire Divers Internet Forum down in Cornwall, none of whom I had met before. Porthkerris on the Lizard has become one of the regular gigs organised by Simon (sch on YD) and is a very popular venue. Having dived there now I can understand why it is so popular and my name will be one of the first on next years list. (Unfortunately I cant make the second trip in August) Porthkerris Dive itself is based in a lovely bay and you can camp right by the beach, which of course I did.
It was nice to be able to put a few faces to the names I see on the forum boards and meet fellow Travel-Dive writer Mark Milburn, who was also there for the weekends diving. It took me some time to get down to Porthkerris and unfortunately I arrived too late to go out on the afternoon dive. However I did hear about the basking sharks they had been snorkelling with!! Despite it being whale shark season and although we sighted another fin on the surface the following day, it soon disappeared and no more were seen over the weekend.
We dived the The Citrine and The Volnay on Saturday, then Chynallis Reef and Raglans Reef on the Manacles on Sunday. All the diving was good. There was so much to look at on Raglans Reef that the skipper reckoned we had only moved about 40-50 metres from where he had dropped up in! There was plenty to photograph on every dive and I was absolutely delighted to come away from the weekend with my first half decent UK photographs. In particular I will probably remember the uchins that seemed to be perched everywhere on every dive and the dozens of different types and sizes of sea stars.
After some coaching from Mark on what to look for…. tiny circular buttons about the size of your finger nail, I did manage to get a picture of a cup coral. However, after gleefully showing me his dozen or so beautiful pictures of cup corals we came to the conclusion that the cup coral in my picture could possible be a dead one……just my luck! At least I know what I’m looking for next time, but with my awful eyesight underwater maybe I ought to stick to the urchins…even I cant miss them!
more pics
Porthkerris - Cornwall May 06
