The second Spellbinder trip of the year, this one with Richard Moss as the dive manager, in order to work towards gaining his Dive Leader Qualification. Give him his due, he had arranged good weather, sunshine and some good visibility!!
The first dive was on the Lonclara, just off the mouth of the Wear (Sunderland). This is quite a nice dive, with a lot to see. Rather than take photographs, I actually filmed this one. The footage has gone off to the Durham Wildlife trust. The aim is that it might be used to enthuse more people about what lies beneath – both history and wildlife. As usual the shot line was located quite close to the large boilers, from there you can follow the propeller shaft towards the stern, or go the other direction and find what remains of the bow area. There is a bit of swim-thru around the area where the engine block remains. Soft corals and nudibranchs were all over the upstanding plates, with numerous crystal sea slugs being found, some quite large.
The second dive was on Hendon Rocks, where Si Fish took out his new camera and look lots of photographs of Nudibranchs…. All very confusing for me as he is the wreck and rust lover and I am the fish and flowers girl! The rocks are all big round boulders and a bit of a bedrock reef. There are sponges, anemones, squirts and lots of life on them. The rocks have eroded like those on the cliffs, with lots of holes and cracks in them. With careful searching there is a lot of life to find! Not to everyone’s taste though, rust is minimal, so too is the depth at 8-10 metres.
Back on board we had chicken in white wine sauce with rice for lunch, chased down with tea and coffee. The final dive was on the Oslofjord, which again had quite good visibility. We were able to navigate around the wreckage for a change. Bumping in to a few other buddy pairs on the way and finding an angler fish and a dragonet – thank you to Tiago for pointing that one out! We also found that there are some areas which have quite a good covering of dead man’s fingers. Having heard about how the life on the wreck had been smothered by silt, it was nice to find that there is still a lot of life still growing there.