Mulberry Divers Blog

With many thanks to Justin Evans for the photos……….the visibility under the Lifeboat has improved with the recent settled weather; this morning (on the HW-4 slack when visibility is not as good as the HW+3 slack) there was 3m visibility until the tide turned – it was noticeable that closer to the shore kept the visbility the longest.

Perfect weather – calm water, good visibility and a slack water time which meant we could dive before Dinner. We spent most of our time on the right hand side of the Station, just seawards of the line to the anchor………..lots of life including cuttlefish, pipefish, many scorpion fish and a Stalked Jellyfish (only seen on the photo afterwards!). Courtesy of David Nardini and Justin Evans there are several photos on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/#!/mulberrydivers.

Out early to the Mulberry for a drift dive although in practice, most opted to stay on the wreck - good visibility approx 5m. Lots of Pollack, sightings of Conger but nothing as big as the 38 stone Halibut in today’s Guardian. We left as the hordes arrived .

A mixed day since Phoenix had a few minor technical issues which meant that we decided to only do the one dive today and then spent the rest of the day giving her some TLC.

Linda had a successful morning in the pool and Lizzie certified a new Seal – congratulations to Nicholas

For the fifh year running we co-ordinated with the Manhood Wildlife and Heritage Group (http://www.mwhg.org.uk/) for a Selsey Beach Clean-up under and out of the water. This year the weather decided not to co-operate; for us the last two weeks of storm and high winds from East and West meant minimal visibility and the rain this morning undoubtedly deterred many people from the surface activity.

Despite this 14 people dived and managed to find one Coke can and a cable tie underwater – visibility can only be described as ‘challenging’, ‘minimal’ and ’15cms’ – one buddy pair had a 40 minute excursion whilst most spent considerably less time in the water. On the beach at the Lifeboat over 10kg of Debris was collected by one of our newest PADI Seals, the Surface Cover team and particularly Andy Parks with the 6kg he accumulated. Post dive, Hot Dogs and Burgers were supplied by the Selsey Lions and we added our bags to the Debris pile. As previously, money raised from 50% of the Kit Hire and Sponsorship goes to two charities – Selsey RNLI and Project Aware - this year they will each get £87.

Our grateful thanks to everyone who braved the elements and contributed………..

Given the very poor weather we’ll arrange another Dive for Debris when we have more settled weather.

Nice to run a complete weekend’s boat schedule; it hasn’t happened often since the end of April - two training dives and a Drift; visibility on the Mulberry murkier in the afternoon than yesterday reflecting the afternoon increasing wind. Red Gurnards, Undulate Rays and Smoothounds all seen on the Drift. Lifeboat had 7-10m vis on the 3 after slack; as typical, just 3-4m vis on the 4 before slack – the Open Water divers saw pipefish, small sponge crabs and plenty of juvenile fish.