We were supposed to have some training and fun dives at the A Frames. After some of our trainees had to cancel due to car problems, we decided to move the dive around the corner and head back to the 29 steps, where we had dived a couple of weeks ago. The goal was to do some training and look for the weight pouch that was lost the last time we were there. Little did we know at that time what we would find instead.
While Alistair was still adding more weights to John’s BCD, to get him under the water, Suzy and Ray returned from their fun dive, claiming they had seen an octopus at 20m. So Kevin, Gary and I decided to let the lost weight pouch be lost a while longer and rather look for the octopus instead. Alas, we did not find it. What we did find was some langustines and a good sized rocky reef with lots of life. I wonder where all those rocks were, when two weeks before, Craig and I were doing the distance line laying lesson for his Sports Diver training. All we found was mud, mud, a gurnard, and some more mud, with barely a tiny rock to tie the line around…
As Ray’s suit was leaking badly (which despite the rumors will not lead to it being passed on to me) and he was not going to go for a second dive, he had some time to look at the pictures of the mysterious octopus, we will call them Bessie for no obvious reason. To our surprise, none of the pictures of Bessie were any good, due to some ominous backscatter.
The elusive Bessie was most likely out there and we were going to find them on our second dive. For this dive Kevin had to drop out when his regulator acted up. So Gary and I went down to 30m, maybe all the commotion had made Bessie flee to deeper depths, for some peace and quiet. We did find a nice recital of ‘The Dance of the Langustines’ down there and a bunch of flatfish, but no sign of Bessie. On the way back up, more nicely shaped rocks, waiting to have a line tied around them…
When we got out John was practicing his buoyancy with Alistair, making some progess towards finishing his Ocean Diver training. Eager to find Bessie as well, Alistair used his remaining air and Suzy as a guide to catch a glimpse of the chimera. But it was not to be and they had to do with seeing lesser things.
All in all, a nice day’s worth of diving. The pouch is still lost, but a new mystical creature has been found. Merchandise available in the DSAC shop.
Torsten
Not a great picture but proof enough we did see something
Suzy