A Sea Trip to Plymouth and The Scylla - June 06
I never thought I would hear myself say these words ..….great, theres another football match! ……but on this particular occasion it meant good viz without the multitudes of divers that usually swarm all over the Scylla on a weekend. It was Sunday and we were back on the south coast with a fairly early start, as the plan was to dive the Scylla and then the James Egan Lane. Starting from Fowey we zipped along the coast to dive the Scylla. It has been on my list to dive for some time but being an artificial wreck or, as I like to refer to them, ‘a designer wreck’ I have never given it top priority. However I was pleasantly surprised and it made an excellent dive with plenty of life on it.
Various bits of debris lay around on the seabed; these pieces had obviously been ripped off the wreck and then just discarded. It would seem that mindless vandalism is everywhere, even among the scuba community, which is a shame. Collecting spidge is one thing, tearing pieces off a wreck of this type only to discard them a few minutes later is senseless destruction. We are a minority sport and to treat something in this way that has been placed (at great expense) for our exclusive use is just completely idiotic and may affect any future plans for similar wrecks to be sunk. As always however, it is the minority within the sport who may spoil it for the majority.
Despite this is was a good dive and much better than I had expected with the wreck now covered in life. Deadmans fingers and a variety of anemones were growing all over it. Small gobies could be spotted scooting across the sand at the bottom on the hull and a large spider crab lay concealed in some netting. Working our way up the side of the hull to the deck you could swim backwards and forwards across the width of the ship where large window sections had been removed for this purpose. Up on the deck tiny nudibranch could just about be seen once they were pointed out to me.
There were loads to keep me clicking away until my air supply meant that I had to get a move on and back to the shot at the bow in order to ascend. Reluctantly I speedily made my way along the top trying not to get to distracted and stop and look at things on the way. Although there were not a lot of fish it was a good dive and hopefully one I will repeat, although I doubt that the viz will be as good as it was on this occasion as I gather it often is very murky.
Stopping off at Plymouth to get refills we did a recalculation of time and realised that the time left on our tickets in the car park at Fowey would not let up dive the James Egan Lane, which was the original plan. Consequently we shot back to Fowey changed the tickets on all the cars and then went back out to dive the Keateong (the arm of a bucket dredger) just outside the harbour. This was a wonderful shallowish dive with a myriad of marine life both plant and animal. The size of it meant that there were various swim throughs with shoals of bib and Pollock lurking in the gloom only to shoot outside in alarm as you swam through. At one point I felt something on my head and as I put my hand up a little common sea star floated down. I thought I had accidentally dislodged it from somewhere but it seemed that a few were using this ‘ drop off and float method’ to get around as I saw another sea star doing the same thing later.
Looking carefully I could find jewel anemones along the metal structure and cup corals. However, despite taking a lot of pictures I yet again failed to get a decent picture of either of these. Many were in awkward places under over hangs where it was difficult to get the camera and strobe or had bits of weed covering them. Despite this it was a great dive which I really enjoyed…. yet another one to revisit!
more piccys
Various Dive Sites in Cornwall!
