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Have had a couple of good dives after work the last 2 nights Wednesday/Thursday which turned into really fun dives..
Theres a place called 'The South Gare' nearby, It is a man-made breakwater which sticks out into the Tees estuary, it was built about 100 years ago and it is made up of thousands of tons of "slag" from the blast furnaces of Teesside, sounds nice eh... it looks like what it sounds like.. a sh*thole, but a popular one.... the Tees is a very busy river with vuuuury large vessels, tankers and all sorts of other stuff coming and going.
Diving around the Gare can consist of diving the outside wall (seaward side) or the inside wall (river side) and around the tip, altho keeping out of the fishermans lines can be a bit dodgy (and these blokes fish all day and night)
Theres allsorts to see.... crabs in every single crevice, lobsters, starfish, all of the usual stuff... I noticed there was no dead mens fingers or any of that type of stuff which I put down to the tremendous forces smashing against these rocks during storms (someone was drowned not too long ago when a wave engulfed them and washed them away) I've seen pictures where waves are rocketing higher than the actual lighthouse, they hit it with so much energy... scary stuff.
Anyway Wednesday evening the water was like glass, so me and our kid kitted up and prepared to dive, as we kiited six other divers from a local club turned up, we all introduced ourselves, there followed a bit of lively banter and we all set off on the trudge along to the lighthouse and the slipway down into the water. A fair trek but worth it in the end. The tide was right out so it was a shallow dive but full of stuff to see, we did about 45 mins, max depth of 5.5m.
When we surfaced, the other divers were appearing too, and they'd caught a mutha of a lobster, so we all gathered around to Oooh and Aaah and discuss the best way to cook such a fine beast. After swapping telephone numbers and agreeing to call in to their club for a pint sometime we all left satisfied with a good evenings diving.
The next day, Thurday, still with fresh memories of the previous evenings dive I rang the little brother and suggested we do it again, which we did.... what a bloody good time... we had to rely on instruments quite a few times, cos the viz had been stirred up from the previous evening which was a bit of a shitter cos we'd had upto 4m viz the night before.
This time we left the tip and swam due north out to sea following a teensy weensy little squid/cuttlefish type thingy... it kept squirting ink at us as it tried to dodge the torchlight... altho tiny (about 1" long) it was perfectly formed and had luminescant blue edges to it.. we followed it for ages and as we did, the sand would suddenly stir and some life form would suddenly erupt and scuttle away... we spent ages just bumbling about on this sandy bottom seeing shrimp, well one shrimp... more little squid, ghostly white crabs etc, before I gave the signal to return the way we came and try to find the end of this little strip of land..
Not sure if it was good luck or good management but we got back to the gare rocks first time, at which point we started collecting all of the fishermens lost weights, spinners etc.... collecting so many that dragging the bag became a pain.. this went on till Mark got low on air and we had to come up...
2 good dives both within 15 minutes drive for me. :thumb:
P.S.
A big grey seal popped up not 15 feet from us.... stared at us for a while, looked left then right and silently sunk back into the water.. we were gagging for it to come and play, but never saw him/her? again
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Have had a couple of good dives after work the last 2 nights Wednesday/Thursday which turned into really fun dives..
Theres a place called 'The South Gare' nearby, It is a man-made breakwater which sticks out into the Tees estuary, it was built about 100 years ago and it is made up of thousands of tons of "slag" from the blast furnaces of Teesside, sounds nice eh... it looks like what it sounds like.. a sh*thole, but a popular one.... the Tees is a very busy river with vuuuury large vessels, tankers and all sorts of other stuff coming and going.
Diving around the Gare can consist of diving the outside wall (seaward side) or the inside wall (river side) and around the tip, altho keeping out of the fishermans lines can be a bit dodgy (and these blokes fish all day and night)
Theres allsorts to see.... crabs in every single crevice, lobsters, starfish, all of the usual stuff... I noticed there was no dead mens fingers or any of that type of stuff which I put down to the tremendous forces smashing against these rocks during storms (someone was drowned not too long ago when a wave engulfed them and washed them away) I've seen pictures where waves are rocketing higher than the actual lighthouse, they hit it with so much energy... scary stuff.
Anyway Wednesday evening the water was like glass, so me and our kid kitted up and prepared to dive, as we kiited six other divers from a local club turned up, we all introduced ourselves, there followed a bit of lively banter and we all set off on the trudge along to the lighthouse and the slipway down into the water. A fair trek but worth it in the end. The tide was right out so it was a shallow dive but full of stuff to see, we did about 45 mins, max depth of 5.5m.
When we surfaced, the other divers were appearing too, and they'd caught a mutha of a lobster, so we all gathered around to Oooh and Aaah and discuss the best way to cook such a fine beast. After swapping telephone numbers and agreeing to call in to their club for a pint sometime we all left satisfied with a good evenings diving.
The next day, Thurday, still with fresh memories of the previous evenings dive I rang the little brother and suggested we do it again, which we did.... what a bloody good time... we had to rely on instruments quite a few times, cos the viz had been stirred up from the previous evening which was a bit of a shitter cos we'd had upto 4m viz the night before.
This time we left the tip and swam due north out to sea following a teensy weensy little squid/cuttlefish type thingy... it kept squirting ink at us as it tried to dodge the torchlight... altho tiny (about 1" long) it was perfectly formed and had luminescant blue edges to it.. we followed it for ages and as we did, the sand would suddenly stir and some life form would suddenly erupt and scuttle away... we spent ages just bumbling about on this sandy bottom seeing shrimp, well one shrimp... more little squid, ghostly white crabs etc, before I gave the signal to return the way we came and try to find the end of this little strip of land..
Not sure if it was good luck or good management but we got back to the gare rocks first time, at which point we started collecting all of the fishermens lost weights, spinners etc.... collecting so many that dragging the bag became a pain.. this went on till Mark got low on air and we had to come up...
2 good dives both within 15 minutes drive for me. :thumb:
P.S.
A big grey seal popped up not 15 feet from us.... stared at us for a while, looked left then right and silently sunk back into the water.. we were gagging for it to come and play, but never saw him/her? again
and on one wall was a huge map of our local coast just off Redcar and on it where pinned the locations of all of the wrecks.... well I had no idea.. there's loads of them...
