Seals and soft corals
By Nicola Faulks
Date of dive: 05 July 2025
Really busy boat, but good for business as the year seems to have had a slow start. We were a group of twelve, and there were another ten or so divers there too. But as always, Glad Tidings and her skipper Michael were well up for the job. The first dive was on the Pinnacles, where the visibility was excellent. Lots of shoaling saithe and some big colourful wrasse to see as well. The urchins haven’t grazed too much this year, so there were plenty of soft corals and other life to be seen as well.
We all surfaced after a lovely dive, the sea still pretty flat, and no rain yet……. and were met with hot cups of coffee and some cake made by one of our team – very nice! Niall and his son were trying to watch the rugby on a mobile phone while the rest of us chatted and shared stories of previous dives. Oh and Laura had to dry out her dry suit that had performed as a wetsuit.
The second dive was on the Hopper, which is a great dive, with nice steep walls and a rocky seabed. The inlets are always worth looking in to as you never know what you might find, including new species of nudibranches to the North East Coast. This time we were greeted by a friendly grey seal, who was very unconcerned by us and let me photograph her a few times, before lazily swimming off.
The soft corals here were looking really nice too, with some colourful anemones in between and quite a lot of butter fish. Strange how you sometimes get lots of a particular species on a single dive. There were quite a few jelly fish in the water column to, but thankfully not the stinging type.
We all surfaced, smiles on our faces after two nice dives, just a shame the hot water for coffee had run out!
