My recent trip to Scotland this February, we only dived three sites – Conservation Bay and North Strome on Loch Carron and Inverinate on Loch Duich. I made a short video about this latter site, which is one that I never tire of. Let me know what you think!
There is a sign that always makes me smile on the drive around the head of Loch Carron, “Strome Ferry (no ferry)”. The other end of this disused ferry crossing is North Strome across the narrowest point of the Loch, 15 miles by road or 700 yards by water, and whose sturdy slipway at North Strome provides a most convenient entry to a superb dive site.
The tide powers through that narrow gap, emptying and re-filling the loch, twice a day and that energy means the sea bed is teeming with life. The substrate is rather special, actually. It looks and feels a little like leather, but is actually made from dead kelp fronds bound together by tiny fibres to create a giant mat over the seabed and so provide a haven for a mass of bivalves which shelter beneath, filtering food from the water. These Flame Shells are vulnerable because they cannot withdraw their tentacles and are rarely seen but above their protective covering there’s lots of activity.
My most recent visit in February, at a time when Scottish weather is at its least clement was also at a time of spring tides, when the flow is at its strongest. Yet at slack water, the underwater scene is deceptively peaceful. Although last year’s kelp fronds are tatty and soon to be replaced by this season’s growth, there is still plenty of activity and I spent a pleasant hour taking in the scene on series of dives at this site.
Even in the depths of winter, this site on the shore of Loch Carron in NW Scotland is bustling with life. This week brings the extra flow of spring tides, but my buddy and I slipped in around low water and had half an hour before the current got too strong for comfort. Out in the channel I could feel the flood tide building, so we swan back to the wall near the shore and then experienced a strong current in the other direction as the water eddied around the bay
I finally broke my 2021 duck with a dive at Capernwray quarry in Lancashire; the weather was unkind, so a sea dive was not an attractive option. Capernwray is blessed with good visibility and the trout patrolling the shallows are an enticing photographic subject.
I chose to try various long exposure techniques to give an impression of movement. Using an exposure time of 1/4s whilst moving the camera briskly to “overtake” the subject gives a pleasant motion blur (and it tends to hide the backscatter too). A burst of flash at the beginning of the exposure freezes some detail on the subject and adds some colour. In order to maintain a decent depth of field, an aperture of at least f/8 or f/11 is needed and that necessitates as low an ISO setting as possible. The small aperture also forces a high strobe output.
I also tried a zoom blur. It is quite tricky to get the zoom action quick enough to show in the exposure, but it’s probably easier with the camera housed. Underwater, the zoom is accomplished with a flick of the finger on the zoom wheel (rather than gripping and rotating the zoom collar when holding the camera by hand).
I was most pleased with the results when the camera was close to the subject (for these large trout, less than 30cm) and when there is some object in the background. This generates significant motion blur on the background and allows the strobe to illuminate the subject.
These trout are quite large, so too big for any of my macro lenses. I chose my trusty Tokina 10-17 lens, but struggled to get enough opportunities with the fish close enough to fill the frame. A longer lens would have perhaps been better; next time I might try a teleconverter to bring the subject a little closer.
This technique requires a lot of trial and error, and the “hit” rate is pretty low. Nevertheless, I managed to capture half a dozen “keepers”.
Hot on the heels of my presentation to the Royal Photographic Society nature group recently, I’m giving another photo talk next week. Ironically, even though it is over Zoom, it is to a very local camera club. I’ll be talking about the demands of photography whilst wearing scuba gear and the techniques I use to capture my images. Let me know if you’d like to come along!
On our cruise back south to Lerwick from Unst, our first stop was the Gwladmina, a large Victorian steam ship which sank upright in 38m. Most of the cargo seems to have been recovered and, descending the shot line amidships, we were able to complete a circuit of the ship – bow first and then astern along the exposed prop shaft and then to stern with rudder blown off to salvage the prop.
The second dive was not a wreck, but a scenic site for a change. The Giant’s Legs is an iconic geological feature at the southern end of Bressay, where the headland has been eroded into a series of broken stacks. Underwater, the terrain consists of series of submerged stacks. We saw many nudibranchs, but I had camera problems and had to return to the boat, before getting back into the water agains. Two dives for the price of one!
Links:
Another morning, another wreck!. In this case, the Jane, a cargo ship which came to grief in 1927. The wreck lies on its side, with a large propellor and rudder visible. It stands several metres proud of the sea bed but shows signs of collapse in several places.
Our second dive was a drift off Burra Ness, on our way to Balta Sound. The sea bed consisted of maerl and coarse sand with very large undulations caused by the tide. We saw many hermit crabs, one or two nudis and a huge plaice.
The evening saw us in Baltasound, where we chatted to the skipper of the Björn, a gaff Cutter rugged ketch flying the Norwegian flag. In fact the owner was from Iceland and had sailed to Shetland via the Faroes, on his way to Bergen and points south in Norway to overwinter.
We also walked up to Balta Light, the most northerly pub in the UK. In these Covid times, we decided not to stay inside and drank our pints in the surprisingly cold beer garden.
Baltasound has several other notable landmarks, including the John Peel memorial bus stop (currently sporting a “2020 vision” theme in “honour” of a certain Mr Cummings) and also a memorial to the crew of the WW1 submarine E-49, the site of our dive the next day.
Links:
NOTE: I wrote these blog posts at the time of the dive trip, but was not able to post them at the time, so there’s roughly a week’s delay between the date of posting and the day they were written.
The Shetland Islands is a place I have long wanted to visit and I was lucky enough to be invited by my buddy Rob Bailey to join him on a week-long charter aboard the new liveaboard MV Clasina skippered by Bob Anderson.
We arrived in the attractive town of Lerwick first thing this morning off the overnight ferry from Aberdeen, and transferred a small mountain of gear onto Clasina. Rob and I had met our fellow divers on the ferry and, predictably we all got on well – an experienced group from East Cheshire BSAC.
Our shakedown dive was a corker, on a trawler called Fraoch Ban (gaelic for White Heather), a trawler whose internal bulkhead had failed, causing its catch of sandeels to shift, which capsized and sank the boat.
The first thing that struck me was the amount of light. Like many of the best Shetland wreck sites, the Fraoch Ban lies upright on sand, which reflects a lot of light. The visibility was about 15m, which meant we could see from one end of the wreck to the other. A large winch and gantry sit on deck and a large shoal of fish swirls around the site. I spotted a new (to me) species of spider crab and others saw octopus and angler fish.
The second dive was close by at Noss Head, a cliff dropping into the sea with a series of deep gullies. This exposed site has wonderful purple rock formations and many anemones – dahlia, Devonshire cup corals and even patches of jewel anemones.
The surge reduced the visibility but the gullies made for an interesting swim and I was buzzed by a couple of seals – the female coyly checked me out from just beyond camera range and my buddy told that a large male was watching me from behind; as is often the way, I was not even aware he was there.
Link: Shetland trip day 2
As we pass the halfway point of the trip, this day was a real highlight – a site so good, we dived it twice. This wreck was the E-49, a British WW1 submarine which hit a German mine in March 1917 and tragically was lost with all hands at the mouth of Baltasound. The life of a submariner must have been terrifying and heaven knows what those men experienced when the mine exploded. It is always sobering to visit such war graves and though some feel that these sites should not be dived, I think that these wrecks are a memorial to the bravery of our forebears. What struck me was how small the submarine is; this 55m tube must have been an incredibly cramped place for the 30 crew to live.
She lies upright in 32m on coarse sand, which provides stunning light and visibility. The bow section is blown off and lies a few metres away from the main wreck, which lies mostly buried in the sand. The conning tower is broken off and lies to the port side. The stainless steel periscope is clear to be seen and many other details of the gears which operated the ballast tanks, winches and hydroplanes are visible. The wreck tapers off into the sand, with the propellor just visible.
Having finished our pair of dives, we returned to Baltasound and got a taxi to see the amazing colonies of Skua, Gannet and Fulmar at Herma Ness and which also gave us a marvellous view of the light house at Muckle Flugga. This marks the northernmost reach of both Shetland and the UK. It was amazing to think that the was only the Arctic to the north and the whole of the Atlantic to our west.
Links:
The skipper’s briefing described our first site of the day as “Shetland deep”, in other words 40m, but in clear and calm water. I don’t often venture below 30m because usually there’s not much to photograph. My previous experience of wrecks at depth is that there is too little light to make pleasing images. However, our site this morning – Lunokhods-1 – was worth the depth.
Sunk relatively recently (1993), the Lunokhods-1 is a “klondiker” (factory fishing ship) which dragged its anchor and ran aground in a storm. Consequently, the bulk of the wreck is shallow, but the bow section sheared off and slid down the slope to about 40m.
The skipper put the shot bang on the bow, so we had an ideal dive profile – descending first to maximum depth to admire the view looking back along the bow with the divers visible in silhouette and their probing torch beams picking out details of the wreck. The clarity of the water meant that plenty of light penetrated to the sea bed, as well as providing great visibility.
After this highlight (sadly a short stay), we zig-zagged up the sloping debris field, so that by the time we reached 12m, our decompression commitment was spent. With additional time in the shallows, the safety stops were completed and it was time to send up the SMB and reluctantly return to the surface and the waiting Clasina.
We motored to the Out Skerries for the next dive. This group of small islands is so called not for being remote, but is derived from the Norse word for East.
Our second dive was under the lighthouse on Bound Skerry. The rocks slope steeply into the water and this contour continues under the water. Dropping into the clear water to 20m we followed the wall along to the point looking for crayfish (Palinarus elephas).
Along the way, I found a nice dogfish (Scyliorhinus canicula) sheltering in wide crack in the rock. After searching for a while in the kelp, we were rewarded by discovering a nice crayfish. Despite the yellow antennae, these impressive clawless crustaceans are surprisingly well camouflaged among the yellow brown kelp and purple rock. This fine individual tolerated both Rob and I taking turns photographing it.
Links:
UnderSea-Images 