Duo-Divers

The general topography...... the rocks are not as smooth as you may expect considering the considerable tidal forces but the surfaces are smothered with various filter feeders which thrive in the oft moving flow!

A dead Velvet Swimming Crab (Necora puber) being eaten by Hermit Crabs (Pagurus bernhardus) and Common Starfish (Asterias rubens) everything is used, nothing goes to waste in the seas!

Heading down the boulder slope for the starting point, good vis but don't go straight to the bottom, you will go round and round in a pit!

You will also see loads of starfish, this is a sunstar (Crossaster poppasus) and these can be many shades of red-purple depending on what they have been eating.

A Lions Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata), when they are about deco stops are always interesting!

A Long Clawed Squat Lobster (Munida rugosa) I tried to get something a bit different for this shot, not sure if it worked.

It was a bait-ball but obviously not sandeels, on closer examination they appeared to be Sprat (Sprattus sprattus). Locally they would be called Brit which is a catch all name for immature herring, mackeral and sprat which form a pillar to the local food chain.

The stern section of Mistley has been really scoured with an extra meter of depth now available, with all of the solid stuff exposed there has been a significant amount of non-ferrous scrap shifted this year

A Short Spined Sea-Scorpion (Myoxocephalus scorpius), a nice 'easy' fish to get nice photographs of, as you can probably tell if you go through all of the albums.

A view inside a deck gun, this one has a more intact breech assembly and you can make out the various gubbins

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.

Bear with me....its the port side hawse pipe and the two 'eyes' are where the flukles of the anchor located to sop them 'bashing about' when the ship was operating at high speed or inclement seas.

A butterfish (Pholis gunnellus), these colourful critters live from rockpools to depth, just stop and look, you'll see them

The anchor chain, you can see a link here, is wrapped around the vessel and with the shot-line tied at one side it really is 'difficult to loose the line and have to do a blue water ascent.

This dive I headed to the stern and this is the port side rudder

'Cut me and do I not bleed'.... Alternatively 'Clout me and do I not rust'

I have never seen this particular species of Starfish (Echioderm) here in the North East although they are common in warm water further south or on the West Coast. Apparently this species is quite ancient.....

A shoal of immature Bib (Trisopterus luscus) this shoal was always around a particular large rock on the site, not sure why, guess that there is a subtle current split or join?

A long Clawed squat Lobster (Munida rogosa), these critters can be seen all over the dive sites once you get down to around the 15m mark

A shot showing four rods coming out from the sand clos to the propellor tip, so probably part of the engine mounting arrangement.

A Lions Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata), when they are about deco stops are always interesting!