St Abbs

by Shirley and Robert Stobbs

A trip to St. Abbs, Scotland
08/06/2007

On a glorious Friday afternoon, 22 intrepid divers set out for St. Abbs, (Oh no! I wasn’t supposed to start with that – sorry Pete!)…

As we were in the throes of heading towards St. Abbs, the coastline between Dunbar and Eyemouth, we excitedly talked about what kind of marine life we could hope to encounter (you know we really should enrol on that British Marine Life course that Ann leads!). We eventually arrived in Eyemouth, bonny Scotland at around 6.00pm.

We headed off to the Ship Inn for the planned rendezvous with our fellow diver buds. It was really exciting to see so many of these fellow divers who we feel fortunate to call friends. It was also very reassuring to note the extensive level of diving experience there was amongst us all. We split up to try out a range of great local eateries, from sumptuous steaks, seafood platters to fish and chips. After eating, we met up again, for a little more ‘social liquidation’ and (obviously) to plan the weekends diving, starting with the 2 ‘waves’, who would be diving with Martin or Pete, the two dive leaders, who were also staying at The Anchorage, (noise no limit!). We said our goodnights; all of us greatly looking forward to the morning. We were the ‘lucky ones’ as we were on the second ‘wave’, getting a so-called lay in!!

We met at St. Abbs harbour in the morning (at 8.30am!!), and had an extensive briefing about the boat and how the weekend would run. We met the skipper, Pete Gibson; what a real star he is, every inch the captain, but also turned out to have a wealth of knowledge about each dive site we visited, and we briefly checked out Pete’s boat the ‘Silkie’, moored against the harbour wall (far) below us, which is a converted fishing boat, and had plenty of room for the twelve of us diving.

We set out for our first two dive sites The Craig and West Hurker; just heading out was exciting enough, seeing the rocks of the headland which are mainly a combination of soft red sandstone and much harder volcanic rock with the differing, but always, dramatic rocky outcrops, watching and hearing the vast amount of Razorbills; as they swooped and dived in for the fish. The dive from the boat was a backward roll, with some lovely entries guys; there were bottoms, and legs akimbo on each entry, (excuse me – not just mine!!)

Day two saw us diving on two equally impressive sites, Blackcars and Skellies. Your first impression is of being in a very well tended garden, with what looks like small trees, kelp attached to sturdy trunks (we really should learn the name of some of this stuff!). We saw hordes of pipefish, swooping and darting, a few rather large wrasse, Pollack and through the green water there were jellyfish everywhere, like a carpet of red and blue pulses. But most important – we spotted nudibranchs on both these two dives, always a fine talking point!

The whole of the diving totally lived up to expectations; visibility underwater was some of the best I have seen in the UK, with up to 10 to 15 meters of visibility and temperatures around 11. The marine life, in the form of soft coral and anemones was particularly beautiful, with sea urchins, sun stars and brittle stars everywhere, and the masses of big white blobs (or) white dead man’s fingers eerily pointing at you!

We thoroughly enjoyed the entire weekend, from the whole camaraderie to the excellent diving, and will definitely be putting our names down for a return trip. We didn’t see the local attraction, the Wolf Fish (very ugly fish) on this trip, which also means we’ll be back!