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West Lothian Sub Aqua Club
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A wonderful weekend whale watching and diving on the MV Silver Swift with Skipper Paul Gallagher at the helm. Friday 8 June. |
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| Saturday 9 June. Saturday morning was clear and calm, with a beautiful blue sky over a mirror calm sea. We motored out and headed north west to our first site. On the way we lucky to see some harbour porpoise and the dorsal fins of a couple of Minke whale, but more of that later. Dive 1 - Studley Pinnacle. We were only the 3rd group paul had put onto this remote rock 7 miles west of Muck. It rises shear from the depths to a small kelp covered plateau at 12 m. Due to suit zip problems we dived in separate waves and or first wave had the best of the current. The rock is covered in huge jewel anemones packed tightly onto the top between the kelp and down the vertical faces into the depths. Grazing sea cucumbers, starfish and shoals of pollack, families of cuckoo and ballan wrasse completed the picture. The thick kelp stipes are covered in hydroids in which nudibranchs graze. As the first wave sat contentedly drinking tea while wave 2 were diving that we next saw the Minke whale again. Graham leapt up and his - "Omigod a breaching whale" - focused all our attention 1/2 mile to the west where we watched a large whale shooting vertically out of the water to its middle before falling backwards into the water with a huge splash another twice. Wave 2 were decidedly unimpressed with our tale. |
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 Lunch.We motored over to Rum for lunch and snorkeled ashore to explore Papadil Loch, the little lochan north of Sgerean Mora on the southern end of the island. We were closely watched by a red deer while we explored. Dive 2 - Sgerean Mora, Rum. The west side of these skerries are a magnificent dive down parallel gullies close to the rocks dropping over a rocky slope with Dead men's Fingers and other soft corals to sand at 28 m. |
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| Dinner Dinner was a superb meal in the new Fish Cafe in the old McBrayne terminal on the pier in Tobermory. The gang ate and drank well and even managed a wee nightcap in the Mishnish before bed. |
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 The Dive Team at dinner in the wonderful Cafe Fish. Left to right: Iain Graham, Iain Bett, Martin Mulhall, Ben Reid, Graham Reid, Russell Parker, Jim Anderson. |
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Sunday 10 June. The plan was to get up early and out on the water for 7 am and go round and dive the Hispania on slack water. We managed everything but the tide so we turned round and headed over to Loch Sunart. The weather stayed calm although the sun was behind high cloud from 8 am onwards. Dive 3 - Sligneach Mor, Loch Sunart. This splendid reef and wall start at 8 metres and drop in shelves to wherever. Superb soft corals, anemones, tunicates and lots of fish. |
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| Dive 4 - Glas Ealan, Sound of Mull. The Gray Rocks sit to the west of centre of the Sound down opposite the Thesis and are a lovely drift across Dead men's Finger covered boulders and rocks at the bottom of the 15 metre wall. The highlight came again while the second wave were diving and the rest of us were entertained by 3 Bottlenose Dolphins playing about the boat as we lay off covering the divers. They stayed with us eventually heading back to the southern end of the rocks while we returned to Oban |
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    Photographs by Jim Anderson. |
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If you have any corrections, comments or suggestions e-mail us.
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To contact Skipper Paul and book the Silver Swift or obtain more information
connect to the link below.