2022 was a particularly memorable year for my scuba diving, with some fantastic dives around the Isle of Man (IOM) and a great trip to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. For my own records I thought I’d list my ‘Top 10 Dives of 2022’ to look back on in years to come. I hope others (including the divers who were with me) will find it interesting. Thanks to my dive buddies at Discover Diving and the IOM Sub-Aqua Club, and without them the dives would have been far less enjoyable!
I’ve actually included 12 dives here – there’s a joint number 10 and number 3 on the list actually entailed two dives, but as it’s my list I think I can get away with that!) My list include two historic wreck dives, some spectacular scenic reefs, a close encounter with a seal, seagrass surveying and translocation, and Seasearch citizen science. I hope 2023 is just as good…
Joint #10 – IOM, Calf Sound (2-6-22):
I had never dived in the small bay at the southern tip of the mainland, but on the encouragement of Lee Dixon we set off and parked by the Calf Sound Café where there were hundreds of bikers visiting for the TT races. We carried out a shore dive in the bay to the east of the café.
There was an impressive animal turf (sea creatures that live in large colonies attached to rock or other surfaces) covered small wall near to the entry/exit point, but what made it a such a memorable dive was that we were joined almost immediately by a large Atlantic Grey Seal who then stayed with us for the entire dive. It was extremely curious and followed us about, playing with our fins and nuzzling my camera on several occasions! I’ve enjoyed some wonderful seal encounters underwater, but this was definitely the best yet, and the film footage is available here YouTube.
Joint #10 – IOM, Groudle Glen (7-5-22):
Another dive with Lee Dixon, who enthusiastically joined me to carry out the underwater element of our Manx Wildlife Trust (MWT) BioBlitz. Many of our MWT staff team were at Groudle Glen for the day, encouraging visitors to the Glen to look at and record all types of wildlife, and the dive added an underwater dimension to the BioBlitz event.
I have to admit the actual dive site was not spectacular, but it makes my list as it was my first BioBlitz dive in the IOM, it was a new dive site for us both, the sun shone, the visibility was excellent, we had the UK National Coordinator of Seasearch (Charlotte Bolton) with us to help with identification back on shore, and there was real interest from the people back on the beach to discover what we had seen. We recorded many types of seaweed and collected a few samples to show people back on the shore and completed a Seasearch form after the dive.
#9 – IOM, Douglas Harbour Pontoon (21-5-22):
At the encouragement of Michelle (MHK, Dr Michelle Haywood from Discover Diving) I had written to the IOM Government Department of Infrastructure (DOI) to ask if a small group of divers could be permitted to do a survey dive from the floating mooring pontoon in Douglas harbour. Our aim was to survey the pontoon to search for Invasive Non Native Species (INNS) as part of the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture (DEFA) INNS Week.
The DOI were extremely supportive and with surface management for the dive provided by Steve from Discover Diving, a small team of us dived the pontoon to see what we could find. I buddied with Tim Nicholson (the author of the IOM Sea Slugs/Nudibranchs book published in 2022 and available on-line here). Pleasingly we found no INNS, but we did discover a rich habitat of complete animal turf cover on the sides and underneath the pontoon. The dive was only 3m to the seabed, but it was certainly enjoyable and different, and Tim and I spent the bulk of the time swimming underneath the pontoon, facing up to the surface and slowly inching our way across the habitat looking for interesting things. There was some nice media coverage about our dive, including on the IOM Government website and the 3FM website.
#8 – IOM, Ramsey Pier (6-7-22):
I’ve shore dived underneath Ramsey Pier on a few occasions (it’s an excellent night dive) and on this occasion in July I was buddied up with Lee Dixon to conduct a seagrass survey under the whole pier.
It is a deceptively long swim to the pier end (683m). Our total dive time was 89 minutes, however Lee and I also later did the same dive with twin sets on 19th July 2022 (lots more breathing gas) and we covered the whole pier and out as far as the structure called the Dolphin that is c.50m north of the eastern end, lasting 125 minutes! The first July dive makes my Top 10 as it is very atmospheric under the pier, swimming under and around the metal work, and having it all to ourselves. We mapped the whole pier for seagrass (including filming the patch at the very end – on YouTube here) and encountered a wide range of other life, including a number of Catsharks swimming around the structure.
#7 – Scapa Flow, SMS Markgraf (31-8-22):
I joined a Discover Diving trip to the Orkneys in late August to dive the famous World War 1 German shipwrecks in Scapa Flow. I had previously been on dive trips to Scapa on three occasions, but this was my first trip for several years and I was now qualified to be able to dive on a twinset (with more gas) and with an additional cylinder of gas with a higher oxygen percentage, meaning that I could stay underwater far longer and have more time to look around.
I buddied with Jim Self for the week, and we enjoyed 10 great dives together: nine WW1 German ships and a WW2 British aircraft (see dive #4). Every dive was excellent and was made even more so by the additional bottom time (thanks to the extra cylinders) and the wonderful pre-dive briefings by Emily Turton, the skipper of our dive boat for the week MV Huskyan. My previous trip to Scapa had been made c.10 years earlier and I had come away thinking that the wrecks were crumbling and there wasn’t much left to see. I was delighted that I had been persuaded to return and armed with Emily’s briefings we were able to find so much of interest on every dive.
Out of the nine ships we dived, the dreadnaught battleship SMS Markgraf was the best dive of all. It lays upside down on the seabed, and the absolute highlight was being laid on my back on the seabed at 43m deep, at the base of the huge vertical bow of the ship, looking up at the sheer scale of the bow as other divers descended towards me. A wonderful experience and I could have stayed there far longer!
#6 – IOM, The Burroo (9-9-22):
If you were to ask any local IOM divers what their favourite IOM dive sites are I am confident that the majority would include The Burroo in their list. The Burroo (or ‘Drinking Dragon’) is a spectacular high-energy site at the southwest tip of the Calf of Man, consisting of vertical walls and narrow gullies that, due to the high daily tidal flows through the site, are completely covered in animal turf. You struggle to find any rock surface that is not completely covered in life of one form or another and the Jewel anemones are particularly spectacular in terms of sheer diversity, abundance, and colours.
This dive was part of an IOM Seasearch week, which had been organised by the National (UK) Seasearch Coordinator Charlotte Bolton, who was accompanied by other renowned Seasearch divers from the UK. This time I got to dive from the boat of Isle of Man Diving Charters, run by Mike Keggen and his son Tom. Their boat is a large RIB and delightfully has lots of deck space and a tail lift. My buddies for the day at the Burroo were Iain Dixon (one of the Scottish Seasearch Coordinators) and one of my IOM dive buddies, Richard Cowin (who is super keen on all things marine biology/conservation and is the lead volunteer in our Manx Eelgrass Group.
The Burroo “never disappoints” and we had a fantastic dive exploring the gullies. I seem to dive the site via a different route every time I go there and this time we found ourselves in a large rock bowl, 100% covered by a huge range of anemones. Excellent visibility underwater, a brilliant dive and it was excellent to be able to have coffee and chat afterwards with some really knowledgeable divers/marine biologists.
#5 – IOM, Sugarloaf Caves (19-6-22):
The Sugarloaf caves are another famous IOM dive site. The caves and swim-throughs at the base of the cliffs are fantastic, with opportunity to see the tiny, beautiful and very unusual Pink Soft Coral (Alcyonium hibernicum) that grows on one area in the long swim-through cave.
In early summer the Sugarloaf Caves site is enhanced greatly by the birds that nest on the Sugarloaf cliffs, offering divers the chance to experience Guillemots and Razorbills underwater alongside them, as the birds frequently dive down and swim close to divers to suss us out! One theory is that the birds may think our bubbles are small fish.
My dive buddy was Tim Nicholson and we both set out with the aim of capturing the Guillemots on camera, and Tim also with the aim of some scenic shots to enter in the Discover Diving annual photo competition. Tim is a fantastic photographer, and I’ve included a couple of his images of me from the dive below – including the one that won the photo competition with the sun a guillemot, me and a bed of kelp. Great shot!
This was a fantastic dive with the caves, the Pink Corals, and lots of close encounters with birds underwater. Spectacular.
#4 – Scapa Flow, Grumman Wildcat (2-9-22):
I have a long time interest in aircraft and particularly military aircraft from World War 2 and I had discovered on the internet that there is a known aircraft wreck of a WW2 British Fleet Air Arm fighter aircraft (a US made Grumman Wildcat) in Scapa Flow that has only fairly recently been discovered. Early on in our week in the Orkneys I had asked Skipper Emily if it might be possible to dive the wreck and she came up trumps.
On our last day Emily (armed with the coordinates from another skipper) went to the known site, located the wreck on her scanner and dropped a shot line. Myself and my Buddy, Jim Self, descended down the line in what was the worst visibility of the week – perhaps only 3-4m at best. Thankfully, Emily had dropped us within 5m of the wreck site and we found it almost immediately.
The majority of the aluminium airframe has decomposed but the radial engine, parts of the wings, the .50 calibre machine guns, fuel tank, wheels, landing gear and other debris are all clearly visible. Compared to a battleship, the remains of an aircraft are miniscule, but the history, and the fact that only a few people have ever dived it, made it a memorable dive and my favourite dive from an excellent week of diving.
#3 – IOM, Fort Island and Port Erin Bay (29-6-22):
This was actually two dives that took place in close succession on the same day. Through my work at Manx Wildlife Trust, we had been granted some funding by corporate sponsors and a licence from the IOM Government to enable us to carry out a test of seagrass transplantation. Our aim was to repopulate a site in Port Erin Bay that a historic map shows previously had seagrass present.
Dive 1 was from the shore in Fort Island Gully on Langness, where we collected seagrass plants from the dense patch in the gully. We then moved to Port Erin, where we boarded Endeavor (Discover Diving’s hard boat) and dropped in the northeast corner of the bay where the seagrass bed had previously existed. I led the team on both dives and on Dive 2 it took a few minutes before I found the right spot, just on the edge of a rocky reef where it joined sand, and at a mid-tide about 6-7m deep.
Both the harvesting and planting went very well, with the other volunteer divers doing a great job. One of the team, Mike Wilson, compiled a brilliant film to record the day and it is available on his YouTube channel here. It feels good to ‘dive with a purpose’ and being involved in seagrass translocation and survey dives this year has been fantastic. Our Manx Eelgrass Group now has a sponsor (KPMG) and we are planning further survey dives and (if the move to Port Erin proves to be successful) perhaps more translocation. Since we transplanted the seagrass we have undertaken two monitoring dives and so far it is doing well.
#2 – IOM, HM Sloop Racehorse (20-4-22):
My #2 dive of the year was on the wreck site of HM Sloop Racehorse. My last blog linked here was all about the Racehorse, and on our dive on 20th April we rediscovered the wreck site, and the 200 year commemorations of the sinking that took place in December 2022. Read my last blog if you’d like to know more about it, but I’ll give a short summary of the dive here.
The 20th of April was a beautiful sunny and calm day. The IOM Sub-Aqua Club (who bizarrely own the wreck) took two RIBs out to the site. I buddied with Dr Jon Chamberlain from Essex University who had come to the IOM to specifically dive this site and capture imagery that could be turned into a 3-D photogrammetry model. We were not sure exactly where the main debris was, and we weren’t sure we’d find it. Delightfully we did, and my first sight of wreckage was when I looked down and below me in a crevice were several bits of metal, green copper coloured pieces, and what were immediately obvious as grey lead musket balls. Then into the main gully which was littered with ballast weights, cannon balls and other large artefacts such as the lead sheeting and an anchor. I picked up one piece of metal and immediately realized it was the brass trigger guard from a musket. Amazing! The hour dive went far too quickly before we surfaced and excitedly shared our experiences back on the RIBs. It was a perfect dive on a perfect day, and we were buzzing as we headed back into Port St Mary. My footage is available on YouTube, including the 3-D model made by Jon after the dive.
#1 – IOM, U-246 (8-7-22):
It was extremely difficult to decide between my two best dives of 2022. I was a part of two superb dives on two historic wrecks and both were memorable in so many ways. I have flip-flopped between the Racehorse and U-246 while thinking about writing this blog, I considered having a joint number 1, and then realised there was only really one winner…
Diving on a WW2 German submarine has been a personal ambition for many years. This year the opportunity was offered to me by Dave Copley (a hugely experienced IOM diver) to join a small team he was setting up in conjunction with Discover Diving to dive the wreck site of U-246 which is situated in the Irish Sea approximately mid-way between the IOM and the island of Anglesey in North Wales. Dave was keen that I joined as one of the photographers to record the day. This opportunity had arisen as two of the relatives of one of the German crew who died when U-246 was sunk had contacted Dave and offered to pay for a team to dive it and place a memorial plaque on the wreck and enable them to lay a wreath on the sea above the site.
The wreck is at a depth of c.50m and in 2021 I had gained my qualification to dive to 60m on tri-mix gas, so U-246 gave me the opportunity to put my new skills into practice. The possibility of diving a U-Boat like this was precisely what had motivated me to get qualified to 60m. Perfect!
On the 8th of July (as with the Racehorse on the 20th April) somehow all the stars aligned – with another beautiful, sunny and calm day, and happily the two Swiss gentlemen arrived at the boat in Port St Mary fresh from their morning flight just in time to avoid us having to call off the dive because of the tide times and window of opportunity to carry out the dive.
The journey to the site was great and the dive to 50m (49.7m) went perfectly to plan. We had wonderful visibility underwater and the memory of first seeing the conning tower of the submarine and then circumnavigating the whole wreck site is something I will always remember. I got some photos and film footage (see YouTube), and on it if you listen carefully you can hear my dive buddy Dave Copley excitedly saying “conning tower, that’s the conning tower” as we first encounter the wreck.
We attached two plaques, the relatives laid the wreath on the surface of the sea, and the two gentlemen were absolutely delighted with the experience. Back at Port St Mary we all went for dinner and enjoyed the stories, photos, and films of the day. The media picked up on the story, appearing on both ITV and BBC news including my film footage, as well as the press including Isle of Man Today, Manx Independent (see below) and Gef the Mongoose.
This was a fantastic dive on a perfect day!
leigh3666.wordpress.com 