Drifting Along In Skye

By Jane Wilkinson on 13 August 2008

With visibility around the 20m mark, a speed of around three and half knots, flying over massive areas of deadmens’ fingers (that I named fields of fingers), seeing a skate with a wingspan that was at least four foot, this was possibly one of the best UK drift dives I have done. It certainly was the most memorable.

This dive was part of a week’s diving off the north end of Skye with skippers Dave and Alan from Lochaline Charter Boats. We were back out near a group of islands that we had dived before but this time near the island of Gaeilavore. Once again there was a lot of kelp as we dropped in the water round about 10m. This is due to the clearer water letting the light through to sustain the growth and it doesn’t really peter out until you were around the 20m mark on many of the dives in this area.

Fields of Fingers

Whilst there was very little current at this particular time it probably flows through here at quite a rate on occasions. The ‘feet’ of the kelp were gripping tightly onto the rocks, their holdfast ‘toes’ creeping into every crevice they could find to hang on to. Moving down to gain a bit of depth the kelp gave way to a rocky seabed. I continued down to around 28m where it flattened out and it was here that the bottom of the sea was carpeted with orange, white and creamy coloured deadmens’ fingers. As far as you could see, which was around 20m, stretching out in all directions was this colourful field of fingers. As I swam out across the top the current began to pick up and with nothing to hang on to I wasn’t able to take any pictures but I really regret not even trying to get even a ‘bad’ picture for my own personal memory collection.

Watching my depth I had dropped down to around 34m and seeing the wall of the island ahead and to the left of me I decided to hug in close to this and see what was making its home here. As I made my way over in the direction of the wall across a large sandy area I noticed something lying on the bottom. Initially I thought it was a large ray lying on the sand but in actual fact it was a huge skate with a wingspan of around 4ft. Another diver who saw it ‘flying off’ thought it was actually larger than this. As the current had eased off I gently dropped down hoping not to disturb it and started taking photos. Gradually creeping closer I deeply regretted not having a wide-angle lens with me; the oft-heard lament of a photographer with never the right lens! The resulting photographs were not particularly good nor of course did they really give any idea of size but I’m glad that I was not the only diver who saw this wonderful sight; a female skate of this size is fairly unusual. I was gradually edging closer and closer but finally she must have decided that I had invaded her space enough and she gently lifted, turned and languidly flapped her way off into the gloom and finally out of sight.

Going up the wall

Being at 36m I decided I needed to start working my way up the wall as I didn’t really want to incur more than a couple of minutes deco. As we had seen on so many dives in the area the wall was studded with cup corals growing like little patches of flowers and the warm pinks and reds of spiky urchins protruded from many surfaces. Soft delicate fronds of plumose anemones wafted in the currents while the brilliant scarlet of cushion stars dotted the walls. Velvet swimming crabs watched my progress with their devilish red eyes often waving their claws in the air as I paused to watch them and the odd edible crab seemed to eye me from beneath beetling brows. Female cuckoo wrasse were common with the odd flash of turquoise as the males cut boldly in front of me.

All too soon it seemed the dive was once again over and regrettably I had to make for the surface.

Contact

Author: Jane Wilkinson
Email: info@travel-dive.com

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