Diving in Dale

MKSAC Newsletter June 2000

On the last Bank Holiday weekend a group from the club took the RIB over to the Pembrokeshire coast to do a spot of diving out of Dale. Having all made our separate ways through the Bank Holiday traffic (with a brief stop to pick up a copy of Dive magazine at the motorway services............OK. I'm lying.......With a brief stop to pick up a copy of Maxim magazine with super-model's in swimwear special) we (Christine, Adrian, Colette, Cameron, Sonja, Pete, Owen, Chris and me) met up at a bar at the caravan and camping site we were all to stay at. Myself, Chris and Owen were to spend the weekend under canvas and as expected, a new hole in the ozone layer was formed in the atmosphere directly above our tent that weekend. The cause of this however, was not Colette's chilli on the Saturday night (which was very nice indeed, especially with the sour cream. Good choice Colette) but probably the daily lunch time re-fuelling of double sausage, bacon (somebody had triple and set the record for most pig consumed in a single day) egg, chips and yes......God protect us......... beans. The three of us have not quite finished our Sport Diver training and these were to be our first sea dives, so I'm sure that BSAC would have something to say about us spending the whole weekend on mixed gas! Anyway, having lowered the tone, I'd better raise it a bit but I'll stay on the subject of environmental conditions............

The weather did us proud during the trip and the sun had certainly got it's hat on for most of the weekend. This is more than I can say for Owen however who temporarily lost his to the cruel sea. After using about 25 litres of diesel trying to retrieve it, we were finally ready to take the plunge in a small bay round the corner from Dale.

I had a mixture of excitement and caution about diving down into a completely new environment and as I took the plunge with Colette I immediately appreciated what all the corn-plaster dodging at Stantonbury and mooning to the passengers of the MK-Euston train down at the Bluey had been for. Although the visibility wasn't excellent, it was good enough for me as we descended down amongst a forest of kelp broken by rocky gullies and sandy flats. I learned to dive for the wildlife and it was great to be met almost immediately by a shoal of Pollack and a STEALTH-model Spider crab with its seaweed camouflage, strutting across the sand. The crab was just the start of what was for me, a weekend wildlife fest' which brought a lot of the pages of my Collins Guide to Sea Life to...uhh ..... life. I must just say at this point that Adrian and Chris had a really nice encounter with an octopus and for this, I will be removing them from my xmas card list.

The weekend culminated in a fantastic encounter with some of the best divers in the world at Skokholm Island. The journey there was fantastic as the RIB found its way( Alton Towers-like) through a glistening, lumpy sea. As we rounded the edge of the island we cruised past flotillas of Puffins and Razorbills who dived for safety on our approach after giving up on their stubby wings to take them anywhere else. Finding a calm bay we quickly spotted a group of Atlantic Grey seals and Cameron and myself were the first to jump in and try to meet them under water. It wasn't to be however, as not a single seal showed its face. It was a good dive none-the-less and there was plenty of other life to see and a dirty great old anchor in-bedded in the sand. After the dive, we surfaced and it was clear the seals were still all around us and I'm guessing that they were probably never far from us under the surface but kept just beyond the visibility threshold. Colette and Pete decided to dump all the heavy stuff and try a bit of snorkelling with them and this seemed like a good idea so Chris and I jumped in to join them. Within a few seconds we had bull seals five or six feet from our faces. I 'd found in the past that seals respond really curiously to unusual noises so I tried a few (to the amusement of the others) and moments later one of the males was making a B-line for us. At this point in an encounter you have to mentally reassure yourself that this 8ft long 800lb lump of blubber with teeth an Alsation would be proud of is harmless!.........probably. The visibility below the surface was still letting us down a bit, but over the course of about an hour in the water, we caught quick glimpses of them lying on their backs beneath our feet, before sliding deeper in to the greeny haze. I'll always remember one particular moment when Pete was bobbing upright on the surface looking for the next in-coming animal and a female Grey surfaced silently no more than a couple of feet from the back of his head. If he hadn't been all hooded-up, Pete would have been enjoying some amorous female breath on the nape of his neck which, as an ex- fireman, I'm sure he's got well used to.

So, it really was a fantastic weekend with lots of great diving, scenery and company. The experienced attention Christine, Adrian, Colette, Cameron and Sonia paid to us greenhorn's throughout was the real icing on the cake and made for a trip that we'd repeat again and again................Sorry guys, you won't get rid of us that easily!