old site, new toy

The friday night weather forecast said the sea temperature was 21 degrees and I knew that was wrong right up until I got in the water to find that yes, it was noticeably warmer than last weekend. Noticeably more blue as well. On Friday I had taken delivery of my latest new toy, the underwater housing for another newish toy, my Panasonic Lumix TZ5. For a few years I snapped away with an Olympus Mju that gave me pleasing results but was somewhat limited in what it could do. I am no more than a happy snapper, so a full SLR rig was out of the question - lets face it, that would simply cost me too much money and probably my marriage. So I settled on the TZ5 that has a 28mm wide with ten times optical zoom. It has a decent bit f glas in a compact enough body face regognition software that works with fish and will shoot HD video for up to 15mins. Perfect.

So yesterday I scooted to Fairy Bower - where else - and jumped in with an empty housing and another bit of lead on my belt. I paddled out, dropped down, played with the buttons, observed no leaks and scoooted back to the car to get the camera. Of course I did not put a brand new battery in, so I lost power after about an old-school-roll of around 36 clicks.

The warm blue water with sun overhead was a godsend, if you believe in that sort of thing, or was simply fabulous conditions if you don't. Whichever, it was a lovely place to be. Again here were few sharks - I saw only three and only briefly - so the highlight of the week went to one, and then two giant cuttlefish. I spotted one near the rocks to the north of the site and dropped down to get a few shots. Then, from the surface, and rather close, I saw another, even larger one. Having had one of these things smack me in the head several years ago I felt relieved I'd spotted his second lad and that he'd not taken exception to my presence before I saw him. They seemed to be eying each other off with a mix of caution and suspicion that stopped short of aggression, hen they went there separate ways. I followed the smaller of th two as the larger decided to skulk under a rock. Freediving and no strobes. Unlikely to get a good picture of a subject under a rock.

The cuttlefish did not seem to mind me following him and neither hurried away nor turned on me. Which was nice. I left him alone and went to spend some time over the rocks with the yellowtail, old wives, mullet, blackfiish and so on. I tried to take a picture of a school of garfish and failed miserably. With my caera batery dead i thought it likely I'd see loads of sharks - knowing my luck - but that was not the case. I headed out over the sand that, for the first time in three weeks I could see clearly from the surface. I headed back towards the shore, passing other shark haunts but had only a fleeting glimpse of one as it passed me by, adding to the two similarly brief sightings from the beginning of the dive.

Great to hav the clear, warm blue water back.