| A spectacular reef rising up from 30+ m to about 6m
with spectacular walls covered with jewel anenomes and deadmans
fingers. Very tidal.
It was a glorious late July day and having dived this site on
several previous occasions I was really looking forward to the dive.
We had dived the area a couple of days before and knew the plankton
was pretty thick above 25m so we planned to drop down to 35m and
work our way up.
We followed the line down to about 19m and as predicted the vis. was
only about 3-4 so we headed south and down to 35m and much clearer
visibility. At the bottom we turned right heading to where we would
be in the lee of the current once it started to flow. On our way we
passed large ballen wrasse pollack and an inquisitive male cuckcoo
wrasse which followed us for a little way. After about 10 minutes we
headed back the way we came and started to work our way slowly back
up the reef. The rocks were covered with jewel anemones, dead men's
fingers and plumose anemone, with colonies of sea fans below 25m .
Close to the rocks could be seen most of the local wrasse species
including some rather colourful rock cook and by far the largest
pollack that I had ever seen.
Spiralling up the reef the current began to pick up and the high
point of the dive, surprisingly enough, came at about 15m. Coming
out of the lee we came across a mixed group of wrasse swimming into
the tide, holding station whilst moving in and out of the weed. I
held on to the rock with a couple of fingers and joined them!
Photo's taken on a subsequent dive in November.
This really is a magnificent site, don't miss it.
Depth 6-36m (gets deeper further out)
Rating *****
Location 50 02.662N 5 2.520W
Launch Porthkerris, Porthoustock or Falmouth
Caution - Tidal, slack water very short on springs,
surrounded by deep water |
