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I've added my trip report for a couple of days diving in Mochima in Venezuela. It's here.

There's loads more to come as I also dived in Brazil on this trip. If you want to see the non-diving parts of the trip, you can check out my blog: Jason Mochilero

It's only January, but my trips seem to be filling up a lot quicker this year, which is a welcome relief. My first two in Weymouth are already full. My trip to Plymouth, with a maximum depth of 45m, on Top Gun with Gary currently has 3 spaces left. The final trip, my trimix trip, is surprisingly empty. There's still plenty of spaces. Maximum depth will be 60m and I'm thinking of doing something like the Meknes and the more interesting of the two LSTs.

For some time now, Yorkshire Divers has been the main UK diving forum, despite it's northern-centric name. However, it's recently undergone a change of management. The Terms and Conditions have changed making some people very unhappy and some of the moderators have set up their own, non-profit forum.
It's called The Dive Forum or TDF for short. Why not give it a look?

On Sunday 27th May, I went to Dover to do a dive off of Neptune. I dived a wreck called the Anglia in about 30m on the low water slack. The viz was the best I've had in the UK this year, at 6m. There is a lot of bloom in the water though, which is hardly surprising given how much sun we've had recently. The water's starting to warm up too. It was almost 13C. I'd just bought a new pair of Fourth Element 5mm gloves.

This weekend was the London Dive Show. I've not been in a while and I was busy on Saturday, so went up on the Sunday. My first impression was how quiet it was when I arrived. The days of everyone rushing to dive shows to get deals on equipment seem to have long gone, killed off by the internet. I didn't really have anything I wanted to buy and just browsed the booths of the mainly foreign dive destinations. There were a lot from Indonesia this year, and somewhat closer to home, Ocean Addicts caught my eye.

Sunday 18th March saw me go down to Portland to do some local, winter diving. First dive was a drift across Balaclava Bay. Well it was supposed to be a drift, but there wasn't a lot of current. There were a lot of scallops though. I got a bagful. Visibility was about 3m except for one patch which I think was caused by other divers on the boat. The sea temperature was 10°C, 2 degrees warmer than the previous weekend in Eastbourne, but it usually gets colder the further east you go at this time of year.

They've started work on the artificial reef in Weymouth. See this article in the Dorset Echo.

At the moment, it's the lobster hatchery reef they're doing. Let's hope they make some progress on sinking a wreck soon.

The site has been somewhat neglected over the last couple of years. It also didn't help that my previous blog software was hacked. Typically it was the only part of the website code that I didn't write myself. Now, however, I've moved to using Drupal. Not everything is there yet, but it will make updating the site much quicker and I hope to get back to updating things regularly.

Jason