With many thanks to Justin Evans for the photos……….the visibility under the Lifeboat has improved with the recent settled weather; this morning (on the HW-4 slack when visibility is not as good as the HW+3 slack) there was 3m visibility until the tide turned – it was noticeable that closer to the shore kept the visbility the longest.

It’s been several months since we were last able to dive the Lifeboat Station; with settled weather all this week and signs that visibility was improving,  we took advantage of the convenient slack water at 0815 to start the day with a dive.  A quick stroll along the walkway suggested the best conditions would be found closer to the beach so we descended by the second walkway leg and swam towards the Boathouse – visibility was consistently 2m+ although grainy – swimming out to the back of the Boathouse and slightly East, we noted that the sandy area seemed to have increased significantly.

Plenty of marine life – dahlia anenomes of all sizes and several different colours were plentiful and easy to see with no weed -  hermit crabs scuttled in all directions and a small tompot blenny watched us from beside one walkway leg (this was the only fish seen). This was the first dive with the Canon Ixus 115 HS / Ikelite housing - I was impressed with the camera’s ability to put itself into macro mode without me having to touch a button. It seemed to cope with the moving fan worm well at the end of the dive.

One point to note on exit – there is now a small slope by the first walkway leg after the end of the groyne; the very fine shingle on this slope provides no support and hence your feet sink into the shingle if you are walking backwards as an exit.

Perfect weather – calm water, good visibility and a slack water time which meant we could dive before Dinner. We spent most of our time on the right hand side of the Station, just seawards of the line to the anchor………..lots of life including cuttlefish, pipefish, many scorpion fish and a Stalked Jellyfish (only seen on the photo afterwards!). Courtesy of David Nardini and Justin Evans there are several photos on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/#!/mulberrydivers.

A mixed day since Phoenix had a few minor technical issues which meant that we decided to only do the one dive today and then spent the rest of the day giving her some TLC.

Linda had a successful morning in the pool and Lizzie certified a new Seal – congratulations to Nicholas

Despite this 14 people dived and managed to find one Coke can and a cable tie underwater – visibility can only be described as ‘challenging’, ‘minimal’ and ’15cms’ – one buddy pair had a 40 minute excursion whilst most spent considerably less time in the water. On the beach at the Lifeboat over 10kg of Debris was collected by one of our newest PADI Seals, the Surface Cover team and particularly Andy Parks with the 6kg he accumulated. Post dive, Hot Dogs and Burgers were supplied by the Selsey Lions and we added our bags to the Debris pile. As previously, money raised from 50% of the Kit Hire and Sponsorship goes to two charities – Selsey RNLI and Project Aware - this year they will each get £87.

Our grateful thanks to everyone who braved the elements and contributed………..

Given the very poor weather we’ll arrange another Dive for Debris when we have more settled weather.

Sunday’s Mixon dive had even better vis (8m) – large Thornback Ray was seen at the end by the group that had drifted out of the Hole and were heading East.