Selsey Lifeboat Station Shore Dive June 21, 2006
Posted by Mark Gilmour in : Shore Diving , trackbackIt is always a delicate balancing act planning dives together for Lisa and I. Having four children under 6 means that we have to get creative with the way we book our dives and sort out the babysitting duties. So an early evening dive on a neaps weekend was a good bet for us. Originally we had planned to dive Pulpit Rock from Julian Whytes shuttle rib in Portland at 6.30pm which would have been almost perfect timing for spending the day with the kids and then getting them ready for bed. Unfortunately Julian had to change his schedule and that was that, there was nothing else happening in the evening, so we had a look at the tides and decided that slack would work for a shore dive down at Selsey.
The shore dive at Selsey East beach is underneath the Lifeboat Station pier, it has to be dived on slack water, which is 4 hours before High Water or 3 hours after. (See here to calculate slack) For Saturday HW was 16.38 so meaning slack was a very convenient 7.30-7.45. We arrived just before 7.30 at the pier and parked on the main road. We quickly got kitted up, with the weather being so good, I had forgotton to pack some socks to go under the drysuit - doh! so had to make sure the fins were on tight!!
The weather was very pleasant, the water was like a mill pond and it promised to be a lovely evening dive but I was concerned we had missed slack. We made our way down the short path and over the pebble beach to the water and waded in to waist deep. Put on our fins and dropped into the water. I decided to forego the hood which was quite liberating. The water temperature was a very pleasant 18deg.
We descended a couple of metres to the sea bed which was moving as a mass of spider crabs of all sizes made their way along the bed and up the pillars of the pier. I had never seen so many crabs together in one area, and it continued for the whole dive. It was like some sort of crab love fest. At the first pier we met a large gathering of bold spider crabs with a couple of edible crabs hiding under the metal. Also a relatively large Tompot Blenny nestled in the middle of all the crabs. Moving on we were treated to a free swimming eel, wrasse, couple of pollack? (not good on my fish id) and a pipefish lying still near the sea bed. The current was still pullling a little as our depth increased to 5.5m, not deep but so much light and visibility made this a very very enjoyable dive.
We reached the end of the lifeboat ramp at the end of pier and turned out from under it. We had agreed to send up a dSMB for a bit of practice so Lisa completed the drill and we meandered back along the pier to the shore.
We spent a bit of time having a good look around the pier pillars again and finished the dive on about 50 minutes. Ducking back down to have a look at crab infested rock just off the beginning of the pier a few metres from the shore.
All in all this turned out to be a very enjoyable and relaxing dive, the weather was beautiful and the amount of sea life was outstanding, making this an excellent shore dive that is highly recommended.
Comments»
Nice to read this Mark, its on my ‘to do’ list! One day I’ll probably write a book about all the piers and jettys I’ve dived
Thanks for the great report Mark. We’re going to try it out bright and early this weekend (Sat 8am)
We’ll let you know how it goes
Rob and Di
(East London)
good write up not surprised to hear julian changed he had to change his schedule been diving with him for years and he has never been any diferant top bloke thogoing to give the pier a go this year so nice to read cheer buddy
bazz!