01 The first undulate ray

On a nice, sunny July weekend, some OUUEG members went down to Portland for two days of diving from our club boat, “Seahorse” The weather was perfect, and on both days we managed to get two dives in. Our first dive was a drift dive on Lulworth Banks, starting at the wreck of the British Inventor (although I have to confess I didn’t see any wreckage…) and then slowly drifting over a mixed seabed consisting of sediment and rocks.

We found a cuttlefish right at the start of the dive, but my personal highlights were the two undulate rays (Raja undulata) that we encountered during the drift. Undulate rays have been on my “bucket list of UK fish” for years, and now I found two!

Cuttlefish!
Followed by the second one. Each indiviudal has a different pattern of lines and spots
Sea squirt and other life on a rope - at least something to see on a silty wreck

For our second dive, we dived three wrecks (yes!) inside Portland harbour - the landing craft, bombardon unit and barge, all very close together (well the bombardon unit and barge actually sit side-by-side) and connected via ropes. Glad we had those guide ropes - the visibility was pretty awful, so I can’t really present any photos except one of a few sea squirts on a rope. It’s the small, squishy things that make those low viz dives worthwile. We concluded the day with fish and chips (or curry, for some people) on Chesil Beach.

Lovely day at Durdle Door
Evening at Chesil Beach

Sunday started with a dive at durdle door, the iconic rock arch West of Lulworth Cove. People were sunbathing at the beach, swimming in the cool water, jumping off the rocks - and we explored the world just underneath the surface. Our SMBs attracted a bit of unwanted attention, but a few… polite words sorted the situation.

Sea bass at Durdle Door.

This dive was my favourite dive of the trip. The water was clear and warm, the geography had lots of variation (boulders with deep gullies in between), and there was lots of fish life, including a school of sea bass. One of the ballan wrasses we saw was so huge and colourful, it looked like it belonged to a much more tropical reef! This was one of those dives that could have lasted much longer, but since we wanted to get several more waves in today, we surfaced after 50 minutes - just as we had planned.

Sea hares (= pretty big sea slugs, or rather snails).

Our second dive was, like yesterday, one of the harbour wrecks, and like yesterday, it was murky and visibility was almost not existent. We dived the wreck of the SS Enecuri, known in Portland as “The Spaniard”. The Encuri was a Spanish steamship the hit the Portland harbour wall in a strong gale in 1900. Today, only the bow is still standing, everything else has collapsed onto the seabed.

A school of bibs, in great visibility at Durdle Door.

We spent about 40 minuntes at the wreck (-age). We dived in a group of three, which wasn’t ideal in this visability, and, as a consequence, had a few buddy separation situations. When Kirill and I finally lost our third group member and couldn’t find him again, we called it a day, went up, and met him on the surface, about 5m away…

A school of bibs, in great visibility at Durdle Door.

Well, it might not have been the fireworks-and-sparklers end to the trip, but it didn’t ruin our mood - we had some really nice dives this weekend. And I saw my first undulate rays!