Diving Poole with Bite!

by Graham Bowers

There was plenty of space on Richard Styles' Bullet 38 Bite, as only 5 made it to Poole and of those, only 3 divers. Nathalie, Graham and John W. dived, Dave did a fantastic job of looking after us whilst recovering from a cold and Pauline enjoyed a couple of days poking about ashore.

The campsite was excellent, with more facilities than most of us have at home, but sadly the pool was empty, which meant the night dive got cancelled.

It was a leisurely start as low water slack was at midday. Conditions on Saturday started fine and bright (5.30) but by the time we got in the water it was looking a bit bleak with squalls up to force 4, which made kitting up a bit bumpy and some fish were fed. We picked the Kyarra as the first dive of the day so we ended up closer to Swanage than Poole. She was built on the Clyde in 1903 and torpedoed in May 1918 and now lies in around 30 metres of water.

Once in the water and on the way down the shot line the motion stopped and anticipation of arriving on the wreck mounted. It materialised out of the gloom the way wrecks do in 5 metres of visibility, at around 25 metres. Very atmospheric. There were a few large cod about and shoals of bib plus smaller fish and a few dead mens fingers but not really a lot of life unless you count all of the other divers, the Kyarra is very popular. At 126 metres long she is a big wreck and would take a few dives to fully explore and better visibility would have helped as to be honest, I have no idea which bit we actually visited. She lies on her starboard side and as we passed over the hull we saw what I believe to be the bilge keel, we then moved over to what was obviously the main deck as we passed winches and bollards and at one point we could see what appeared to be ceramic tiles in a hold. In what seemed like no time at all we had to fire the DSMB and crank back up to the surface. (An obvious candidate for Nitrox diving on twins.)

The second dive was a drift, Peveril Ledges, which are essentially an underwater continuation of Peveril point. Nathalie decided to pass on this one, so now we were down to 2 divers. We dropped in to about 12 metres and drifted slowly over a pebbly bottom that was interrupted from time to time by low bands of rock that seemed about 1 to 1.5 metres high. The fist thing I noticed was how light and bright it was compared to the gloomy Kyarra. The drift was quite leisurely, around 2 knots at a guess, and it was straightforward to hang on to a rock and peer in to cracks and holes to see the crabs and lobsters that were peering back out at us. The usual leopard spotted gobies and wrasse of various types were around but the crowning glory of the dive was a magnificent cuttlefish that was around a foot long, the biggest I have seen in UK waters. We almost drifted straight over it, it was camouflaged so well. It stoically let us stare at it for a minute or so and then swam off slowly at a pace that we could easily keep up with, so we did.

Sunday was an even more leisurely start with slack being 40 minutes later. The wreck chosen was the Betsy Anna and although the book says she is a very interesting dive, she has less than a quarter of the column inches of the Kyarra so I wasn't expecting too much. What a mistake. She is a fairly small wreck at 880 Tons and well broken and we were able to see most of her during the dive. Being slightly shallower at 25 metres max depth and visibility up to 10 metres, she seemed much lighter than the Kyarra and she was absolutely teeming with life. The shot dropped us straight on to the boilers. There are two in line, a main one for propulsion plus a donkey boiler. The boilers are home to a number of large conger but there were quite a few divers there so we set off following the propeller shaft towards the stern. Many plates lie on the sandy bottom and dropping down low it was possible to see underneath them and spot a number of lobsters and spiny spider crabs. Rounding the stern a huge shoal of bib were passed as we made our way back to the boilers which were by now much quieter. One of the furnaces of the main boiler was home to the biggest conger. Nathalie peered gingerly around the corner into the hole as I pointed. As she got directly in front of the furnace she spotted it over to one side and directly in front of her face. I don't know who was the more surprised!

All good things have to come to an end so we ascended up to the top of the main boiler at 19 metres fire off the DSMB and begin our ascent. I was sorry to leave the Betsy Anna and look forward to returning.
We put alongside Swanage pier for lunch and went for a wander into the town. Very pleasant seafront with a black swan (a real one, not a pub) in residence. The pier is supposed to be an excellent shallow shore dive and it did look good. Another one for the future.

Dive 2 was Peveril Ledges again, with Nathalie and without the cuttlefish.

In summary, an excellent weekend with good company and fine diving. The boat was very comfortable and Richard did a good job of looking after us. I'd certainly be happy to dive with him again.

Marlin SAC

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