Plymouth Seasearch Season returns

[Martin Burnard]

Ok my mottly little mates, the Seasearch season has returned.
Time to come out and have a look at the fish and things in our waters.

Brian is kicking off the seasearch dives this coming Monday evening at Aquanauts and Rich at Deep Blue is blowing us out of the water (Bomb did somebody mention a Bomb, surely not!) , from the beginning of April.

Monday nights we are almost guaranteed a dive because we will go where ever there is shelter, and I guess Rich will probably do the same.

So dust off those slates and come come see the fish!

AOW or equivalent, and you do not need to know anything about sea-life, come and learn as you go (see you knew you wanted to come)

[colinicky]

Originally Posted by Martin Burnard

Ok my mottly little mates, the Seasearch season has returned.

FFS are we not an island ? How hard can it be to search for the sea ?

[Martin Burnard]

I think you would be surprised!

I have seen many a kitted up diver nose dive the deck! (and that includes me)

Ok it's time to set the scene for tommorrows dive.

Its been raining very heavily for the past two days, and the Tamar river is flowing quite heavily out into Plymouth Sound (the natural harbour), hence an enormous amount of runoff with silt and mud. This does not always cause a problem as if the tides are right the vis can be reasonable (3m). If the tides are wrong then 1m is possible, it just means you get closer to the sea life before it sees you!

Recent conditions have been a regular 12m of viz with sea temperature running at 6-7 degrees (thats as low as it gets around here).

Sea state has been building recently with a swell causing abit of bobbing up and down on the boat (Aquanaut being a 42 foot Lochin, she rocks a bit, but can do any weather) 12 divers can fit on board and undercover if needs be (one night it was snowing as we headed back in!). So a run for a sheltered dive site will be the call for tommorrow.

Sealife can be rather varied through out the year, so I will try to give you all a taste for what we have on each dive. I will use the common names generaly but as I get more familier with the the latin terms I will include those as well.

There will be limitations to the details (my own limited ability!), but hang in there it will get better.

Any comments on what to include more of/ leave out etc is welcome, after all the idea is to give you a weekly roundup of what is happening in our waters.

Hope you all look forward to it!

Martin

[Martin Burnard]

As those of you who are local will know Monday night was blown out, Force 7/8 winds put paid to the dive!

Good news though is that thje air temperature has started to climb and is now generally 11 degrees as opposed to the 2 degrees of the last few weeks.

Hopefully the water temperature will start to follow soon.

Howver next Monday (3rd of April) is looking good so, keep watching or better still come and dive.

All the best

Martin

[Martin Burnard]

High tides with strong winds has put our part of the coast on Flood alert for today and tommorrow.

River flow is up and so is the run off into it, so vis is crashing at present.

This coming Saturday I shall be out on the boat with Osama (Hi chap) who is preparing for tech 1 with Brian of Aquanauts Plymouth. All being well the 3 of us will get an early morning shore dive in first (Eastern Kings, an atmospheric 30m shore dive).

I will let you know more about the weather etc as we get closer.

[MATTBIN]

Martin,
what does it cost, my boy is down in Plymout (has all his kit except a 12l) and is at Uni, so cost is a big factor.

Rgds
Matt