30th April 17 Felldivers St Abbs Head Pettico Wick shore dive Max depth 14m / 6m Viz / 50 minute dive

 

Sea conditions were unsuitable so the boat was cancelled from St Abbs Harbour and it was decided to checkout a nearby shore entry location. Upon arrival at Pettico Wick we all parked our cars close together, it has a great clifftop view of the sheltered bay. There was small amount of water movement and the visibility was excellent.

Most members had divided the site on previous occasions but I was keen to try it out and buddied up with my plus one friend.

 

 

After a local orientation brief from our local skipper we entered the water from the small concrete jetty stretching out from the beach. With assistance from our club buddies we used a seated entry which was a little tricky as the tide was right out and the water was quite shallow. We managed to pair up and swam a little way out, before descending we did a quick recap of the dive plan. Basically swim out to Wick Gaunt and ‘bimble’ about a bit.

 

We dropped down to 5m and swam further out, it was difficult to stay down at first, I ought to have taken my spare 1kg weight. When descended further I relaxed and enjoyed the dive. We swam over the kelp forest, the bottom is a mixture of unusually flat rock with score marks and a sandy bed. There are shallow gullies, and seaweed around the base of rocky pillars. We saw a wide variety of sea life; squat lobsters swimming, a couple of full size adult lobbys, small shore and velvet swimming crabs, usual urchins, sea stars hiding in thin small gaps of rock and I saw a white tree like sea anemone called Plumose for the first time. We did a surface swim back to shore over the top of a shoal of small fish and a large jelly.

 

We were welcomed back to shore by the club members who had been tracking the dives progress and tackled the steep climb back up what seemed like Everest to base camp. We dekitted, got changed and were fortified with our packed baite and a cuppa. The club went on to the nearby New Inn at the village of Coldingham for refreshments and post dive discussions but we were kaput so hit the road home. A spot on day out was had by all and perfect diving for the First Felldivers Club dive of the new season!