20 Apr, 2007
The Alex van Opstal
I booked myself on a couple of dives with Dive Dorset again. Driving down, I had plenty of time until I got to where some idiot had rolled his car onto the middle reservation. Naturally this cost me ages and I thought I was going to miss out on yet another dive this season, but I got down to Castletown for 2pm, 15 mins before the boat was due to leave. I don't know why it's so quiet down there these days. There were plenty of spare parking spaces in the road. The local council can't be making much money with that carpark at the moment. Still I'm sure they'll fix that by slapping down a load of yellow paint at some point.
The sea was flat calm and the sun was shining through some hazy cloud as we set out on Top Gun. The water didn't look a very good colour though. Going down the shot and it started to get a bit dark at 20m. By 25m, there was no ambient light and the viz was a stunning 1m, maybe 2m.
I've done the Alex before and know that it is sort of ship shape but you couldn't really make out what was what in those conditions. There were a few wrasse on the wreck. The cuckoo wrasse have got their bright, mating colours. My total dive time was 44 mins and I went to 29m. The seabed was about another metre deeper.
The second dive was in the harbour and on a wreck called the Unknown Coaster. It's notable because it's got a big propeller still on the back of it. Other than that, it's quite small and 25 mins on the bottom was more than enough. I got 16m and total dive time was 30 mins. The viz was better in the harbour though. It was a much more respectable 4m and it was light at those depths.
So hopefully the plankton bloom will come and go quickly and early this year. We've certainly had plenty of sunshine already. The sea isn't that cold either. It's started to get up to the 10C mark around Dorset now.