Weymouth Again - Nov 06
At least it wasn’t icy weather for camping this time and I had remembered not only my thermarest, but also a duvet in addition to my knackered out sleeping bag. I was down in Weymouth again for another days diving off Scimitar. It was interesting to see the town’s harbour bridge opening up to let the yachts out. Despite visits here over the years for a variety of reasons, it was something I had never seen.
With only three of us on board we had loads of room to spread out and the plan was a Dutch steamship SS Binnendyk and then a shallower second dive. In 1939 the Binnendyk was en route for Rotterdam when she was asked to pull in at Portland by the Royal Navy to be searched for contraband; on her way she struck a German mine. She now lies at around 28m and is a nice easy dive if you get the timing right and catch slack. Unfortunately we were a little too keen and the current was still running. Finally arriving at the bottom I could see the viz was pretty grim at around 4-3m. I decided to stay in the relative shelter of the boilers and poke around there for a while in the hope that the current would ease off a bit. In the meantime I spotted something bright orange a couple of yards away. Thinking it may be something exciting I was disappointed when I realised it was just the dsmb from one of the other divers. I managed to collect the line that was reeling out and following the trail round the boiler found the diver, and waved it at him while hanging on to a bit of wreckage. Retreating once more to the comparative shelter behind the boiler and looking round I spotted a largish fish…………a triggerfish?….. I did a double take. I had seen loads of these last year whilst diving in Australia, so automatically labelled it in my mind before thinking, hang on, this is UK pea soup, what’s it doing here? I’d never noticed the picture of the triggerfish on the front of the ‘Dive Dorset’ book otherwise I wouldn’t have been so surprised. I took a couple of pictures but with the poor viz and being unable to stay still in the current none of them were much good. It also did its usual fish thing turning tail and quickly disappeared into the soupy green gloom. (the original does look a little better than the copy here)
For some years various sighting have been made all round the uk coast of these grey triggerfish (Balistes capriscus) and in some cases large regular groupings are seen annually such as on the wreck of the Royal Adelaide which is right round the other side of Portland Bill. Why they are here is a bit of a mystery. Their normal range is in the tropical Atlantic and the Mediterranean. But they are not good swimmers and it is thought that they may be bought in by the Gulf Stream from mid Atlantic islands such as the Azores rather than battling the currents and travelling up from the Med. It is usually the late summer months when the seas are at their warmest here that they can be found in the waters around the UK. Unfortunately they cannot survive our winters and it is more than likely they die off when temperatures drop below 12C. However, fishers in Weymouth have caught immature triggers no bigger than 10cm and it is thought possible that they may be breeding locally.
With the weather beginning to pick up we did the Spaniard in Portland Harbour as a second dive. Again the viz was pretty abismal but not having dived it before I found it vaguely interesting. The seabed around the bottom of the wreck was covered with holes. These varied in size from a centimetre or two to about six. I kept noticing movement and looking closer I could just about make out the sand gobies that were lurking all over the silty seabed often sitting next to their hole. They are so well camouflaged it is only when they move you can see them. They would then disappear like lightening as soon as you got anywhere near to try and take a pic.
Although a pretty poor day in terms of visibility, having seen a triggerfish I was absolutely delighted as it made the trip worthwhile.
