Instead of the originally planned weekend to Loch Sween, which had to be cancelled due to illness, we (Agnieska, Heather, Louise, Simon and myself) decided to book a caravan at Glenfinart Caravan park and do some dives along Loch Fyne. We ended up moving our way from St. Catherine’s to Anchor Point, with an in-between stop at Seal reef. On the way back we stopped at Loch Long to have a short dive at Conger Alley.
St. Catherine’s
On Thursday morning Heather, Louise and I made our way west and stopped at St. Catherine’s for a couple of dives on the way to the caravan park. Never expecting to see much here, I always end up surprised by the amount of life around. There were fireworks anemones, sea pens, scorpion fish,
some langoustines braving the open sea floor, all in decent visibility. Heather and Louise even found a cat shark, while I had to be content with a cat shark eggcase.
Seal reef
The next day, early afternoon, we met Agnieszka and Simon at Seal reef for two dives. Agnieszka was going to finish her Ocean Diver training today. While the other three explored the reef together, Agnieska led me along the reef for a dive, at the end of which I signed her off as an Ocean Diver. We found similar life on the reef as the day before, along with lots of squad lobsters hiding among the rocks.
Anchor Point
For Saturday we decided to go to Anchor Point, where Les was going to meet us for the day. We were in luck and some divers just left to free up enough parking spaces, saving us from having to move to an alternative site. Despite the underwater visibility not being the greatest, lost of sea snot was hanging about, it ended up a very nice day of diving. The wall has several cracks with conger eels in them (into one of them a large Ballan wrasse squashed itself to get caught between us and the conger eel…). On top of that there were lots of fish, some cushion stars, nudibranchs and lots more life.
All in all, a very nice dive site we should try to dive more often. On the way back to the caravan park Agnieszka adopted a stray dog, but that is a story for another day :).
Conger alley, Loch Long
Heading back on Sunday, we stopped at Conger alley where Simon and I were going for one last dive, while the others were too tired to kit up and carry their kit a couple of hundred metres from the parking lot to the shore. They missed out on loads of conger eels peeking out from under the rocks, with plenty of fish in smaller and larger groups, some flat fish and lots of sea squirts and rock anemones. A good way to finish off a very nice dive weekend.
