Pirate Bear's scuba diving logbook on Diveboard

Pirate Bear
Scuba Diver
Dived in: Netherlands Antilles, Portugal, Viet Nam, Ireland, Spain, Malta, Australia, France, Egypt, Belgium, Maldives, United States, Norway, United Kingdom

Pirate Bear
Logbook

SHARE K

A mainly UK based diver but love diving all around the world (warm and cold waters). 

Originally was forced into diving whilst on holiday, hated the first day of it but fell in love from day two! Now I'm massively obsessed and spend a lot of my time thinking about previous dive trips, future dive trips and pimping my gear.

Love diving for such a different range of reasons.... silence, beauty, nature reclaiming man-made objects, isolation from Blackberry.... list goes on.

Places I've Dived

Total number of dives not on diveboard:
This number is added to the total number of dives logged in Diveboard (public+private) for the stat "Total number of dives".
Dives published:605
Total dives count:801
Dives this year:0
Total underwater time on Diveboard:18 days 23 hrs 15 min
Most dives on Diveboard in:
United Kingdom
Deepest Dive:
75m in Chepstow, United Kingdom
Longest Dive:
151 min in Gozo Island, Malta
Pictures in logbook:135
Number of species spotted:42

Favorite Pictures

Species Spotted

Data provided by EOL.org

BUser Feed

Pirate Bear's dives and posts rRSS feed

Favorite Dives

2014-05-26 United Kingdom South West
Maine (Ss)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzJQviuPG_Y Cracking diving on this wreck. About as good as British diving gets. Shot was off the port side just aft of the engine room. So we made our way sternwards along the side before dropping into the main hull. Amazed to find a Bull huss just above the stern section. ... Mast have been at least 4 foot long. Filmed him and the conger eel underneath him for a short while before heading over to look at the steering quadrant which still looks very intact. Moving forward we soon found ourselves inside the main part of the wreck moving towards the massive engine block and boilers. Lovely light through the whole wreck and tonnes of bib, pollack and mackerel. Took plenty of video including a spider crab marching across the seabed. Up towards the bow we tried to make out the bow locker where the anchors used to be found. Looks like the storms over the winter have really damaged the wreck as most of the intact bow section has been knocked away. Amazed at how visibly damaged a wreck of a hundred years can become over just one stormy winter. Tried to set off my dsmb bottle but turns out it wasn't filled :-( so I filled it (poorly) from my octopus. Coming back up the line we had plenty of fun playing with the plankton and hydroids? In the sunshine and beautiful viz. Steaming back in to Dartmouth came across a few dolphin swimming West. A very good bank holiday indeed.
2013-09-05 United Kingdom Farne Islands
Abessenia

Lovely visibility on this dive in the morning. Into the water with tonnes of seals, Nessa and Michelle. Bit of surface drift so had to duck dive a bit to get under. Found bits of wreckage pretty easily.... there was tonnes about underwater. Took lots of video... was trying to get lots of the wreckage but the seals kept getting in the way :-) Had a really fun time with a little seal who loved kissing the camera, blowing raspberries at me but had an itchy foot (see video for evidence). Also Michelle and I had some fun high-fiving a massive seal which must have been twice the size of me! Also had a funny moment watching a lobster marching his way home with a fish in his grasp; looked like a decent supper for a lobster of his size. In fact there were tonnes of lobsters around on this dive. Overall a cracking dive and probably the best fun with seals so far. Am amazed at how lucky we have been at the level of interaction we have had with them and how many have been in the water at any point.
2014-06-22 United Kingdom Swanage
Avanti

What a great dive. The viz was much better than yesterday on the high water slack. Diving with Michelle which meant we could have a decent bottom time. Down onto the wreck was much easier than yesterday as shorter line and less current. Must have been about 10m foreward of the boilers. Moved around a fair while until we reached the boilers. looked like the starboard boiler was half submerged and under a large section of plating. Behind the boilers the engine block was exposed and the large crank was out on show. Michelle pointed out a conger inside. ... Had a look and then swam away but she called me back as the eel had a fishing hook caught in its mouth. She was holding the line so I whipped out my shears and cut it free. .... good to test access and use of the shears at 40m! Moved aft a bit further following bits that looked very much like the prop shaft. A curious large cuckoo wrasse came to investigate as we moved a way down towards the steering quadrant. Stuck underneath was a brand new CQR Anchor (with stickers still attached! ) and shiny chain..... Would have been nice to have lifted that if I'd had my lifting bag with me! Think the skipper will be back for it tomorrow though. Nice 27 mins bottom time followed by a couple of deep stops and 10 mins of deco on 80%. Back on the surface we meet up with the other 6 of our divers as the skipper was struggling with shotline. So we formed something of a flotilla with our flags and blobs.... He was very impressed with how well drilled we were. Cracking dive and amazing to have been out of the water by 8:30 into beautiful sunshine.
2014-05-04 United Kingdom Swanage
Kyarra

What an awesome dive. A real bonus at the end of the weekend. Visibility was much better than yesterday and we had lots of fun poking around in all the holes as well as being able to make out discernible structure on the wreck. Dropped on the bow as before but made our way sternwards spotting the winches, boiler and derricks. I spent a little while trying to free a lovely looking green bottle from under a section of plating.... in the process disturbing a large-ish lobster from underneath me who looked particularly disgruntled by the situation. Alas the bottle did not pop out of the silt but shortly afterwards Nessa spotted a Worcestershire Sauce bottle lying on the seabed.... what a find! Overall with the viz being lovely and such a nice array of congers, bib, lobster and crab to watch we ended up maxing out our bottom time (34 mins) and having over 15 mins of deco- ooops. Lovely dive.