I was down in Portland for a weekend diving on Sea Leopard. Saturday’s dive was the Sidon, a submarine that sank in Portland Harbour in 1955 due to a faulty torpedo, only to be refloated and then sunk as an Asdic target in 1957. More details can be found on Wikipedia.
The viz wasn’t great. The plankton bloom I’d encountered 4 weeks early was still around and there were quite a lot of green bits in the water. You couldn’t see more than 2m, though it was at least light and, as it’s a submarine, navigation is pretty easy. At least the water has warmed up, it was 13.1C.
The following day, we were supposed to do the Aparima in the afternoon, but the weather had other ideas, so that was changed to an early start on the Salsette in Lyme Bay.
It’s a wreck of a big liner sank in 1917 and the good news was that the viz was substantially better at around 5m. The shot was towards the stern. I headed up to the bow, then came back but didn’t quite get to the stern in my 25 minute bottom time. I didn’t have a huge amount of deco gas with me, and at 13.3C, it’s still a bit cold.
Hopefully the viz will continue to improve as the summer goes on.