Guides
St Abbs Harbour Shore Dives
Some dive guides break this particular site into several dives including the ‘famous’ Cathedral Arch, Big Green Carr, Little Green Carr, Broad Craig, Scotts Rock among others. Rather than split up the guide, I have decided to lump the dives together and let the reader decide what he or she wants to do when they dive.
Latest Photographs


Despite the apparent lack of food there are large shoals of Perch
Again I think that this one is a Sand Goby (Pomatoschistus minutus), in itself not particularly rare, however this one was tiny and appeared to the eye to have a translucent quality seen in immature fish.
A Pogge (Agonus cataphractus) or is that Hook-nose or Armoured Bullhead, these are a relativeliy common critter but with their camouflage you tend to see their pearly white barbules before anything else.
The Sea hare (Aplysia punctata) a common enough critter around the uk coastline but we tend to get explosions of them every couple of years.
I think an immature Sunstar (Pycnopodia helianthoides) although I am wavering as it was too smooth in my eyes, still lots of people will correct me.....I hope!
Part of the stern section of SS Mistley, there is a small area where the girder construction is still present and maybe 1m above the seabed.
A compressed air tank, as used to blow ballast from the tanks and enable the submarine to surface. There are loads of these dotted around the site, they are not torpedos, lost dive cylinders or similar and to date I haven't managed to find any with the brass valves in place.
One of the hull plates, which as you can see were double rivetted in place, a much more time consuming method of construction than welding which was made commonplace during WWII
A large Whelk (Buccinum undatum) you see lots of them and if you want to eat them then put in a baited trap.
A high altitude gun, you would have needed some 'minerals' to be operating this even with the aeroplanes and airships of the period!
On this shot you can see the ribs and some of the remaining steel hull plate plus the sea-bed, not sure how long it has been since this much sand and rock was washed from the site.
Another of my regular buddies, Donzo coming out at the bottom, to be greeted with a flash!
When you get out of the kelp zone you will reach a small cliff, varying in height between 2 and 3m
A young and undecorated Decorator Crab, or technically a Long Legged Spider Crab (Macropodia rostrata) loads of em on SS Glanmire on weekend on 1st April.
When you get really close to the bows it does become a little more ship-like
An atmospheric (arty-farty) shot showing one of the large overhangs on the North side of this site.
At last something recognisable, in this case a small calibre gun and associated turret
Iron pieces in some of the gullys that have been scoured out since last winter, they could have been virtually anything