Rock Pinnacle near Hilsea
- Details
- Created on Monday, 16 May 2011 21:17
- Written by Simon Tapper
Another great wildlife dive on a pinnacle to the west of Hilsea
Thanks to Clint and Anne for organising another excellent trip to Hilsea, just along from the Mewstone out of Plymouth.
This time we dived a pinnacle to the west of Hilsea Rock itself. Martin P boathandled there and Dave B boathandled on the way back. It was nice and sunny; there was a breeze, but it wasn''t bad going - sea was just slightly lumpy.
Jake and me sploshed in and we went more or less straight down, swimming toward the base of the rock. Vis was 10-15 metres. We sorted ourselves out briefly, with a bit of mask clearing and a few adjustments, and off we went for a look around.Around the bottom of the pinnacle there were smaller lower reefs and light sandy patches opening out to a large expanse of rippled sand to the south and west. We saw all the usual ''Hilsea'' wildlife. Lots of fish: cuckoo, peacock and goldsinny wrasse; pollack, and dogfish. Going anti-clockwise from the base of the rock from the west side we swam along the bottom of a wide gully. Outcrops along it were covered with dead mens fingers and in the hollows were pink sea fans, sea firs, more dead men''s fingers, yellow ''antler'' stuff and lots of other things: crater sponges, bright yellow ''boring'' sponges, baked-bean sea-squirts...
Very bold cuckoo wrasse swam around us at times as we pottered along nice and slowly along the gully. I took pictures and Jake poked around generally. Another nice thing about the dive was that there was very little any current.I sent up the DSMBi at the end and drifted over more of the reef as we ascended.
Back on Mir, Martin and Dave surfaced after a short while, also having had a very nice dive. The wind seemed to have picked up a bit and journey back to Mountbatten was quite bumpy.Thanks again Clint and Anne (nice cakes too!), and my buddy Jake for the buoyancy masterclass.
