Bank Holiday in Falmouth

We had a fantastic weekend's diving in Falmouth diving with Kate, Pete, Wal and Stu. It was great being back in the water with Kate who shares a very similar outlook to diving as me and is so laid back never uses air! We quickly tuned back into each others underwater signals and enjoyed the Mohegan down in the Manacles and a fantastic dive with Wal in the Narrows doing the three walls. Sunday saw us shore diving and Kate and I did two 60 minute dives - something I just didn't think I'd ever do in the UK. I saw not only my first ever cuttlefish (Kate wondering why I'm excitedly pointing at a large kelp leaf!) but 3 other cuttlefishes on the same dive - so they do exist! Finally we had one more dive on Wal's boat Monday morning and went east out of the channel. Another great dive to end the weekend, watching Wal's party tricks and seeing the largest ever urchins I've seen!! A fantastic weekend catching up with old friends and meeting new and some of the best UK diving I've done!

Unfortuantely I was struggling again with my camera, where I was getting so close to what I wanted to photograph (model student me!) my strobe was burning out most of the images. I need to learn where and when to position the strobe next... Never ending this photgraphy lark!

Some more wreck pics from the Red Sea

Diving the M2 Submarine

Excitement and anxiety were building in equal amounts as yet again I was travelling down to the south coast at some ungodly hour!

I would be diving with Rick and Nobby, 2 Yoyo Instructors and Kev another Yoyo DM so a well experienced team where I would be the least experienced! It's a rollercoaster this diving lark, yesterday I was the 2nd highest experienced helping Rick out on a number of AOW and speciality courses in and around Swanage and now back to the bottom of the pecking order!!

The M2 sits in about 35m of water and is completely intact, she was sunk during routeine exercises in 1932.

We descended right on top of the conning tower and started our dive. The plan was to rack up a small amount of deco (gas permitting) and do a full tour of the sub. From the conning tower we went towards the bow (do subs have bows?!) every hole we looked in there were either HUGE conger eels (and I mean Huge, eyes like tennis balls! Ok eyes like 10 p peices!!), big lobsters or blennies or gobies resting. The wreck is absolutely teeming with life, large schools of pollock hang off the sides and as we dropped down at the nose I saw the largest ever edible crab which must have been at least 30cm across and a couple of bass! You can always tell they're bass as Rick makes lip smacking signs underwater - I think he likes to eat them!!

Back towards the stern we came back up towards the aircraft hangers (where nobby was seen off by a blennie guarding his territory!!) and out down to the keel and rudders. There is a huge amount of anenome growth on the sub, in one square metre I counted about 5 different species alone!

Just as I clicked into 1 minute deco, I signalled I had 80 bar and we started our ascent.

A great 45 minute dive, thanks to Rick, Nobby and Kev!

Deep South Red Sea Trip

At the end of June I joined the lads and lasses from Sunderland Scuba Centre on the Blue Horizon where were dived at St Johns, Fury Shoals and Elphinestone.

We had a fantastic week of diving, usually 4 a day starting at dawn (*eek!*) and finishing with a night dive (when I didn't bottle it!)

The crew and guides, Dray, Chris and Karin were fantastic, Dray in particular giving me the heads up on which lens would be best for each of the dive sites I visited. They told me where I could try and find the interesting stuff I was looking for (although the rare sighting of a Chris Spanish Dancer wasn't quite what I had in mind!)

Jonathan turned from wreck head to fabulous photo subject spotter and HUGE thanks to him for his patience, especially at the Gorgonian Fans on Elphinstone when he was one side coaxing the Long Nosed Hawkfish through the otherside to me with my camera!!

I've posted one of the pics I took of the tugboat wreck at Fury Shoals, a great subject with masses of hard and soft corals growing.

Hola!

Welcome to my blogspot - my narcissistic place for posting what I am up to!

I have a dream *cue the moosic* to dive and photograph the worlds greatest underwater phenomenon, such as the coral spawing after the new moon in Bonnaire, the Sardine run in June / July time off South Africa.

Obviously whilst I have a full time job in the UK I'm spending most of my time researching locations and phenomenon and getting in the water at all and any opportunity trying to improve my photography skills - something that looks really easy but I'm finding pretty hard to get the results I am aiming for! If anyone has any comments or has a great dive experience to share, please post up your comments and experiences.

So for the time being this will probably (as long as it works and I can sort out the techmonology!) be a gallery of my learning process... So please, feel free to offer any comments on my photos and what you think would improve them.