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Whispering Kelp-EWWW.THISTLEDIVERS.CO.UK

WHISPERING KELP

THISTLE DIVERS NEWLETTER

Summer 2019

Your Committee Officers for 2019/20

Anne Peck ChairpersonAndrew Gibson TreasurerShona Carmichael SecretaryMary Archer Dive OfficerClaude Stewart Training OfficerDonald Bain Membership SecretaryJonathan Peck Boat OfficerDavid Speirs Equipment OfficerVacant Member RepresentativeVacant Social Secretary

We have two vacant roles in the committee, if you fancy taking on either MemberRepresentative or Social Secretary let any of the committee know, we would bedelighted to have you ☺

NEWS

Welcome to our newest Thistle members, George Graham and PeterCastrinoyannakis, we look forward to having you come out diving with us in thenear future.

Well done to Mary for recently completing her Open Water Instructorqualification.

Well done to Donaldfor completing his Sports Diver qualification,onwards and

upwards in your progress to Dive Leader!

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We said a fond farewell to George Pinkett who now looks like he is flying acrossCanada by doing a slightly different type of diving!! Have fun George ☺

DIVING – what have we been doing as a club/individuals?

MAY 201916TH May- Loch Long Finnart19th May – Loch Fyne,Glas Eilean FAB dives ☺26th May – Loch Leven, The Manse

JUNE 20192nd June – Bass Rock FAB ☺9th June – Kintyre Wreck and Pipeline16th June – Akka Wreck and Inverkip Pier Pillars FAB ☺28th June – Flame Shell Reef, Loch Carron FAB ☺

JULY 201913th July – Flame shell Reef, Loch Carron FAB ☺14th July – Conservation Bay, Loch Carron FAB ☺21st July – Loch Long Torpedo’s and The Caves23rd July – St Abbs28th July – Little Cumbrae

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CLUB DIVE TRIPS - LOOKING AHEAD

GOZO – weeklong trip from 9th September to 16th speak to Martin Patersonif you would like to know more about it!

ARRAN weekend dive trip using our RHIB - Friday 27th to Monday 30th

September. Places available, contact Anne to discuss if you are interestedin coming along.

TRAINING AND REGIONAL SKILL DEVELOPMENT COURSES - SDC’’s

Thistle Divers Training Day – date to be confirmed but will be in August2019BSAC Open Water Instructor Course (OWI), Arrochar, 10th August 2019BSAC Instructor Foundation Course (IFC) – 28/29th September 2019BSAC South Scotland Regional Training - O2 Administration Course 19th

October 2019BSAC South Scotland Regional Training – Practical Rescue Management(PRM) course 20th October 2019

WHAT ELSE?

Do you know someone who would love to do a try-dive? Why not introduce them toyour club, we can arrange to let them experience diving in a safe environment justspeak to one of the Instructors.

What about you? Would you like to tell us about what training or refreshertraining you would like to do? Speak to us and we will do our very best to get thisarranged for our next training day in August 2019.

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THE AKKA CRACKER WITH NO PIER PRESSURE

Donald Bain

And so it came to pass that 4 intrepid Thistlers (well, 3 and yours truly) headedout one fine Sunday morningin the middle of June to dive the wreck of theAKKA…THE biggest wreck on the Clyde…and then head on to the piers at the siteof the old Inverkip power station.So with some slick organisation, Martin Paterson, Anne Peck, Rob Sewell and myselfwere soon on the road from the meeting point at Robroyston and then onto thelaunch point at Inverkip public toilets. Scenic, eh?

And with little ado, we were on the water sharp and heading to the first site…theAKKA. Some excellent piloting and that handy sonar thing we brought (��) soonhad us next to a well-placed buoy that we correctly assumed was attached to theAKKA itself. Dive teams quickly sorted, myself and buddy Rob Sewell took the firstentry down the handy shot line and onto the wreck at approx. 24m. Some strongtop currents made the first few metres tricky, but lower depths were just fine.With fair viz, we were soon scooting along the old passageway and up to thewheelhouse, where the brittle stars have now taken up residence in abundance. Thejoy of looking in hatches and along areas where others had previously walked manyyears ago, was amazing. To those who have dived many wrecks, I’m sure there’sbetter… but to those who have dived only a few, or those who have dived none atall, it has to be experienced. The simply act of shining your torch down a walkway,your buddy in front…wasto experiencewhat you see on TV and what possiblybrought some of us to diving in the first place. Eerie... yes. Exhilarating…totally!

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All to soon it was back up the shot line. A dive that I would gladly have doubled thetime on was over and it was over to Martin and Anne. On the plus side, whilst I’m noSteven Spielberg, I have some excellent GoPro footage from start to finish.So what was next I hear you ask?Well…

Dive numbertwo saw us head over to the piers at Inverkip, and with a bit ofmajestical boat skills from yours truly, I manageda straight(ish) line toexactly(ish) where we wanted to be. So Rob and myself headed in for what turnedout to be yet another fantastic dive. Rob with his camera, was soon taking shots ofthe residents…and what a lot there were.

Again, countless brittle stars, fantastic anemones,

the odd dog fish or three and what was, to date, the largest lobster I have seen.Once the fine chap (or chap-ess)had allowedRob to take a good few shots, Isidled over with my we GoPro and filmed more than a few seconds of large lobster(Latin name, Shellfishium Bigasf’kus) as it lounged in its home…its home being whatappeared to be half a beer barrel. And it filled the space!

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A good old bimble about (as a wise man declared it) was continued. Not a deep dive(no more than 15m) but a nice lengthy one, and again before we knew it, we werenearly an hour in and ready to come up. Cameras bursting with pics, GoPros full ofvideo, we surfaced at 59 mins to rather choppy conditions but beautiful sunshine.

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A quick turnaround had Anne and Martin intrying a different area close by, but alas,currents took-them away from the dive areathey wanted and resulted in just as long a dive,but with what seemed a bit less to see (at leastthat’s my spin on it!). An hour later, with

everyone safely aboard it was time to head home. A great day ☺

I hope to dive exactly the same places sometime soon again. To the newer memberscomingthrough, this to my mind was a perfect dive. Long, interesting, varied,fun….and safe !

If you have an interesting tale to tell, don’t be shy, email it over to AnnePeck for our next WK edition in the autumn.

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MARINE PROTECTED AREAS PRACTICALLY ON OUR DOORSTEP!Anne Peck

Did you knowthat Scotland has someof the most beautiful and diverse marineecosystems in the world?Marine Protected areas are used to ensure protection ofsome of the most vulnerable species and habitats.

In Scotland there are 217 sites for nature conservation protecting a broad rangeof habitats and species that are found in our seas. These habitats range fromrocky shores and sea caves at the coastline to deeper sea habitats such as coralgardens.

Over the last year I have dived three different nature conservationmarineprotected areas at Arran’s No Take Zone and Marine Protected Area (NTZ andMPA), the beautiful Loch Carron, Marine Protected Area (MPA) and just recentlySt Abbs, Voluntary Marine Reserve (VMR). It’s really obvious from the momentyou are underwater in all of these locations, the difference marineprotectionmakes to the diversity of the dive sites. Lobsters and crabs are a lot bigger andolder, there’s a greater variety and size of fish swimming around and so much morelife to spot when you take the time to actually slow down and look.Every part ofthe seabed is covered in various forms of life.

If you are not sure, a NTZ is an area of sea and seabed from which no marine lifecan be removed by any method. Scientific evidence has shown that NTZs are oneof the most effective ways to ensure marine regeneration.

ARRAN

The Scottish NTZ is approximately a one square mile area at the north end ofLamlash Bay on the isle of Arran set up to protect Maerl beds and to promotenatural regeneration of all marine life.

In 2018, COAST and the community of Arran and the Clyde celebrated 10 years ofthe NTZ being in place and are now campaigning for the complete exclusion oftrawlers and dredgers from the newly designated south Arran Marine ProtectedArea (MPA).

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LOCH CARRONThe story of how Loch Carron was granted permanent protection is totallydifferent! Divers who had visited one of the many reefs in Loch Carron found thearea had been ‘intensively’ dredged over a fragile flame shell reef. Thanks tothese divers raising huge political and public awareness of the problem, Ministersissued a temporary order banning mobile fishing on Loch Carron after the 2017incident.Evidence in supporting a consultation for the Environment on Loch Carron becominga Marine Protected Area (MPA) was published by Scottish Natural Heritage(SNH). The report highlighted the loch’s outstanding marine life, based on a seriesof survey’s carried out in 2017 by SNH, Marine Scotland and Heriot-WattUniversity. They said:Loch Carron is home to the world’s largest known flame shell bed – an elusive andbrightly coloured shellfish species, as well as spectacular maerl beds. Not only arethey outstandingly beautiful but also the west coast of Scotland is of internationalimportance for these seabed habitats.Last June 2018 Loch Carron was given officially made an MPA, which safeguards 23square km of the sea loch up past Plockton (with the exception of PlocktonHarbour) where there is no evidence of a reef. This means fishermen operatingtrawlers or dredging boats will not be able to fish.When we dived there in last month (July), we found evidence that the flame shellshad moved up the loch to the Conservation Bay area where they had never beenseen before. Happy days ☺

ST ABBS AND EYEMOUTH - VOLUNTARY MARINE RESERVE (VMR)Extent of ReserveFounded in 1984 and is Scotland’s first Voluntary Marine Reserve. The MarineReserve covers some 8 km of coastline from Hairy Ness, Eyemouth in the south toThrummie Carr in the north.

The coastline within the Marine Reserve is of outstanding natural beauty withmainly rocky shore backed by steep hard rock cliffs rising from 20m at thesouthern end to 90m at St. Abbs Head. There is a sandy beach at Coldingham Bayand a small fishing harbour at St. Abbs. Beneath the sea the rocky shore extendsinto rocky reefs down to approximately 15m where it then runs into cobble,pebbles and sand.

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There is a wide variety of underwater scenery with rock faces, caves, arches,surge gullies, boulder fields and shipwrecks. The variety of both flora and fauna isparticularly rich and supports a commercial lobster and crab fisheries, and sustainsone of the largest onshore seabird breeding colonies in the British Isles.

With stunning marine life, spectacular scenery above and below the water, andusually pretty good visibility you won’t be disappointed. There’s lots of shore divesand hard boat diving to choose from.

I dived St Abbs a week ago and was astounded at the beautiful reefs and theamount of diversity underwater.I believe I am correct in stating that you won’tfind Wolf-fish anywhere else and I saw two the day I was out ☺

Lastly, I thought you may want to look over a map of all the Marine ProtectedAreas around Scotland, it’s vast and hopefully over the coming years will spreadand grow to protect more of our beautiful seas and seabed habitats for everyone’sbenefit – not just divers.

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FUNDRAISING – KIRKINTILLOCH GALA DAY

It was doubtful that we would be able to take part in the Gala day this year as wehad very little donations and even less volunteers willing or able to help out on theday. However, with steely determination, I decided to at least give it a go.Sowith a very limited number of helpers made up of club members and family, weturned a negative into a positive by having a successful day raising funds for theclub. We made a profit of £372 – not to be sniffed at in the least.

The weather was also much kinder than forecast with only a burst of rain for 5minutes and then back to sunshine and crowds ☺

Once again, a heartfelt thank you to each of you who donated a prize ☺Also ahuge MASSIVE thank you to those who helped out on the day, some of whom haveabsolutely nothing to do with the club but gave up their precious time to assist andhelp raise the fantastic amount we achieved.

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€¦ · web viewwe said a fond farewell to george pinkett who now looks like he is flying...

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