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Welcome to Pelagic Pixels. This is the temporary index to Rob and Dawn's diving pictures. Eventually it'll be nicely formatted, please bear with us. Until then most links can be found below whilst they are sorted into the categories above :-)
Most recently we've had a flurry of UK trips, mostly as part of the SeaSearch project.
2010
 | North Norfolk Dive Week - July 10 If you've ever wondered about diving in the East here's a few galleries which might encourage you to take the plunge. We set aside a week and hit the jackpot with great vis and a mill pond flat sea. That would be enough but the chalk arches we found off Sheringham were stunning.... It was another chance to get out in Mr Squashy, our inflatable which let us get out to the best chalk reefs |
2009
 | Holland - May 09 Zeeland in The Netherlands isn't the first place everyone thinks of as a diving destination but a certain time each May the cuttlefish come to meet and mate under the Zeelandbrug. They arrive when the temperature is right for them and stay for about a week. This time we missed almost all the cuttlefish but still had a great time. |
| North East September 09 There's also a collected index for the next two
galleries - as it's all Northern | |
 | Farnes 09 It was a long time since we'd been to the Farnes and what better way to revisit them than on an MCS trip. Fiona organised a great trip, great weather and picked a roomy boat which gave us plenty of space to stretch out. Stan Hall's base in Beadnell was excellent for the group and well placed for food and great sunsets on the beach. After three days of seal filled diving we moved North, across the border to St Abbs - for our first visit. |
 | St Abbs 09 We stayed at the Rock House which could not have been more convenient. The first day was great but the second showed that even shore dives can be 'tricky' so we went for a walk in the afternoon. A wonderful place for wildlife and I hope we get more than a day of calm weather next time. There was so much to look at we could have spent all our time around Broad Craig but just had to swim over to Cathedral Rock too. By the time we surfaced from our dive on the second day the conditions were marginal and we really didn't need the observant Lifeboat man to tell us not to go in again. (100 Images) |
| Norfolk in August There's also a collected index for the next four galleries - as it's all Norfolk | |
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Skomer
fish survey, July After the hard work of the Scallop survey and the excitment of Urchin scissors in previous years we were looking forward to some simple fun with territorial fish... unfortunately the weather was 'a bit' wet and the vis faded as the weekend went on. As ever we had a great time thanks to Kate's slick organisation and the new improved Lobster Pot pub. |
| Norfolk in July There's also a collected index for the next four galleries - as it's all Norfolk | |
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Saturday
evening gullies This was our third course of the year, and the best we think. The vis off Sheringham was amazing and we had time to dive straight after a warm day of lectures and sea shanties. The gullies are the easiest dive off the Norfolk coast as you can swim out from almost any part of Sheringham and find chalk less than 100m from the promenade. |
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Sunday
morning gullies We were up early the next day for another dip on the gullies... for some it was too early even for a very easy dive but for those who braved traquil seas and warm clear water it was well worth the effort. |
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Sunday
afternoon Vera In the afternoon, after some ice cream, we moved on to Cley where we still had great vis and plenty to see. When the conditins are good you have to grab the opportunity |
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Bonus
Tuesday Rosalie The vis on the Rosalie was better, sitting higher off the bottom and out of the passing salad of floating weed. Graham and Barry joined us for another good dive. |
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Bonus
Tuesday Vera A great dive with a great new find - Little Cuttles, were playing in the sand, just around the big groups of tiny nudibranchs having wild orgies... North Norfolk is a great place to dive in Summer! |
| The East in June There's also a collected index for the next five galleries - as it's all East Anglia | |
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Sheringham
2 Less than two weeks after our first murky dive we had the chance to walk in from Sheringham beach again, this time from the Esplanade - one groyne West of the Lifeguard station. The visibility was much better and we covered 150-200m from the shore, reaching an area where deeper gullies began after a low undulating plain of chalk. |
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Vera
in June We had an excellent investigative dive on the Vera, conditions were adequate but improving, lots had changed since last year. We found that the sands had moved to cover the rear of the wreck, almost up to the prop shaft at the stern. The ironwork was covered in Oaten Pipe hydroids (Tubularia indivisa) but not rich in slugs... maybe they will be along soon? |
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Lowestoft
- The Alto This was our first trip out on Drakkar, Adrian King's amazing hardboat based in Lowestoft. We had a great day and good vis. We found the wreck covered in hydroids and Dendronotus frondosus slugs but the most exciting thing I saw was a couple of Sea Snails (Liparis liparis) which despite the name are fish. After this trip we can recommend Adrian and his boat for a really good day out :-) |
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Sheringham 1 The Sheringham chalk gullies are well known but we had only dived them as a drift by boat from Weybourne. Adrian from Learn Scuba in Lowestoft was one of the people who told us that you could simply dive them from the beach at Sheringham itself, and he was right! The gullies run past the town just beyond the ends of the groynes, just below the Cliff Road car park. It proved you can Seasearch in suspect vis (about 0.5m) and whetted our appetites for more! |
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Dunwich
Seasearch Our first Seasearch Observer course of the year was held at Learn Scuba in Lowestoft. After the theory day we had the rare chance to dive on the remains of St Peter's off Dunwich - the sunken village. The visibility is very rarely good here but we were just able to catch enough for a worthwhile dive. As you can see from the pictures it was quite murky, after an enticing week of 5m+ we got a weekend of 1m dropping to nothing if you found yourself with a trainee Divemaster resting on top of you :-) |
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Babbacombe
Bay April 09 We've been meaning to get to Babbacombe Bay ever since we found out about the cuttlefish breeding which happens there in the Spring. So we stopped on our way down to dive in the Scillies. Sadly this breeding isn't encouraged, as it is in Holland, but ruthlessly exploited by local fishermen. It doesn't take unusual intelligence to see that slaughtering a breeding gathering will heavily deplete the population in the future - it is the way to wipe it out! |
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FIsh
ID Course April '09 This popular course kicked off the 2009 year for sleepy East Anglia where we are just starting to look hopefully at the sea... it may still be a couple of months before it is diveable. |
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Shoresearch
with the NNNS April '09 We've been meaning to get Shoresearch up and running in the East for a while and Dave Leech's kind invitation to join N&NNS for an afternoon on West Runton beach seemed like the ideal opportunity. |
2008
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Norfolk
Autumn '08 As Autumn arrives there's definite feeling of diving on borrowed time with each extra visit to Norfolk. This omnibus collects dives from September and October, including the wildlife on parade for our Norwich Seasearch course, the first outings for the Seasearch boat 'Dangermouse' and a day's diving which was disrupted by the discovery of a fouled net. |
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Kalimantan
'08 - Indonesian Borneo - Nabucco
and Sangalaki What a trip! We'd wanted to extend our Borneo diving after visiting, what is now very busy, Sipadan 4 years ago, but Sangalaki had been off the radar for a while. Finally it was due to open again so we jumped at the chance to be there first but thought it would be prudent to spread our time between two islands in the area just in case things weren't quite ready... Still missing some captions! |
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Holland
- May 08 This was our best planned trip to Holland yet, and so only right that it should go off the rails straightaway... and the Zeelandbrug was filthy and pretty much free of cuttlefish thankfully some of the other sites were just as packed with animals as before, phew! Another interesting twist was that the regional tourism gods had started to update the facilities and now there were toilets even in the middle of nowhere! |
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Swanage
October 08
In the end this
was my last dive trip of the year, many thanks to William for inviting
me along. We had the last of the good weather and in fact some of the
best conditions of the year - flat seas for diving the Kyarra! As we
came back after the last dive all the boats in the bay were being
pulled out in expectation of a BIG storm, perfect timing William!
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The
Isles of Scilly September 08
We'd wanted to go
to the Scillies for years. What better way than with Sally
masterminding the like-clockwork logistics for a week of wildlife
watching? Although the weather wasn't at its best we saw lots of good
stuff and we didn't miss a dive. The island was a great tranquil base
and it was very tempting to stay.There are two sets of galleries, one
set with bad jokes and dodgey captions and a sneaky set of spotters
guides where we tried to name all the stuff we saw.
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Norfolk
Survey Weekend August 08
We had high hopes for our Survey Weekend but all bets were off when we arrived to 2m waves at Cley... We went for a walk but William went in and the gallery telling that story is fun! By the evening things had calmed and David dragged us away from a baked Alaska to night dive the Rosalie... suffice it to say it was dark, surgey and mostly covered in crabs. Sunday was a different story, we were able to dive both wrecks and complete a GPS plot of the Vera - many thanks to Sarah for heroically towing the survey buoy. |
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Norfolk
in August 08 Part 1
By August the water was balmy... so we got in as many dives as we could. On this early weekend we dived the Vera and Rosalie twice each and the next Rob was treated to a dive on the Nubia off Sea Palling with GYSAC. Conditions were not yet at their best but Dawn found some tiny new nudibranches on the Vera and we were able to take some wideangle pictures of the wrecks. As it turns out this was good preparation for our surveys later in the month - oh and Dawn insisted on including some topless beach shots to show how warm it was... |
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Crab
rescue Sept 08
Put online for the MCS and any press to use. Pictures of the rescue - taken by William Hutchins, and a selection of the net underwater and 'jagged wreckage is perfect for snagging fishing nets' background pictures. |
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Salthouse
long weekend land and sea July 08
In July we had to spend a couple of days invigilating at the Salthouse Art Festival and that seemed like the perfect excuse to spend a long weekend on the coast diving as well as acting as 'artists' |
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North
Devon July 08
After being cancelled last year this summer's wasn't all wine and roses either, cue bibical rain! After a couple of days of National trust sight seeing we eventually found the the vis around North Devon hadn't recovered... so our last day was a trip to Lundy - where we had much better vis than on our trip in May. Many thanks to Sally for arranging the trip and acting as our minder for a few days of surface tourism too.. |
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Norfolk
July 08 - Part 1
Our early July haul from Norfolk wasn't as large as we'd hoped as the weather has been 'mixed'. We got in a dive on the Vera on the day our exhibition launched in the Salthouse and Sam and Tony from Great Yarmouth bravely put up with Rob and freaky downpours so we have a couple of diving galleries. |
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Norfolk
Omnibus Edition - June 08 digest
June was a very busy month... We held a Seasearch Observer course with 19 keen divers and (unfortunately) no diving, a Nudibranch ID course with Jim Anderson who travelled down from Scotland to tutor and still (frustratingly) no diving and then we were invited out by Mick from NEDSAC and all of a sudden there was vis off Cley and impossible numbers of nudibranches off Sea Palling. At last the East coast was open again! These galleries show all of that... |
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Lundy
- Seasearch Lundy MarineID Course and diving - May 08
We jumped at the chance to join Sally's trip to Lundy, arriving fresh from Holland in time for a primer course on local marine ID. The course was hosted by Ilfracombe SAC who were a great bunch and dived from Obsession II. |
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Plymouth
- Seasearch Sponge Course and diving - May 08 It's always a pleasure to join Sally's well organised trips, the conditions in Devon are usually better than those up in East Anglia and you really can't find a more authorative source than Bernard Picton. It was a very enlightening and great fun.The microscope sessions at the MBA revealed the amazing, beautiful selection of shapes which sponges create to form skeletons but give little hint at from the outside. |
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Plymouth
- November 07 Sally having some new seafans to investigate seemed like a great excuse for a trip to Devon - until we rolled up at Fort Bovisand to find the MOD police had locked the gates! But everything got sorted and we got 4 good dives in, with a free rollercoaster ride back from the first! Many thanks to Sally and Danny for a really enjoyable weekend. |
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Norfolk
- Fun and Seasearch off Cley and Rosalie - October 07 We'd never dived this late in Norfolk before but the sea stayed flat and fun as we managed a dive weekend and a Seasearch Observer practical session. These six galleries include rare wide angle shots of the Rosalie, Vera and even one of Dawn - so Seasearch students know who their leader is ;-) |
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Cley
Exhibition Weekend - September 07 Norfolk Wildlife Trust publicising the Marine Bill was the ideal opportunity to introduce their mainly bird watching visitors to photos of the exotic wildlife which lurks just off shore. We couldn't resist fitting in a dive too! |
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North
Pembroke - September 07 The Urchin survey seemed ages ago and it was great to see a lot of familiar faces from that adventure. Kate had (as usual) got the world organised on her side and we had a great time and will be back - if they'll have us! |
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Salcombe
Bay from Plymouth - August 07 Although we had been due to dive North Devon in June the had weather scuppered that plan so Sally (Seasearch Coordinator for Devon) worked hard to fit in another trip. We dived out of Fort Bovisand on their cool, black RIB, running around towards Salcombe to sites including Prawle Point and Persier Reef. We stayed in the Mountbatten centre which turned out to be inexplicably empty but handy for both Bovisand and food on the Sound front. |
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Norfolk
Twin Wreck Shore Dive Challenge Take 2 - The Vera and Rosalie again
August 07 This was a momentous visit as we saw the first Tompot Blenny (that's him on the left) reported off Norfolk (as far as we know) and I finally got some decent pictures of Bib! For this trip we had a good number of our new Seasearch people who were ready to do some of their assessed reports and get well on the way to being qualified observers! See our guide page if you want to take the challenge yourself :-) |
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Norfolk
Twin Wreck Shore Dive Challenge - The Vera and Rosalie August 07 Shore diving sounds easy, and the diving bit is... but even the shortest walk is complicated by carrying 35kgs of equipment. Walking across gravel makes it even more fun! However it was well worth the effort and no means boat there's no need to limit your dive time. Both wrecks have slack enough for at least an hour's dive most weekends - we were greedy and had an hour and a half :-) We have added a guide page for anyone who fancies taking the challenge themselves :-) |
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Cley
next the Sea, Norfolk July 07 We can't believe we waited so long to dive the Vera at Cley next the Sea, it was packed with pipefish and crawling with crabs. Our local half dozen were joined by a group who had come down from Nottingham. |
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Skomer
Urchin Survey, Pembrokeshire Jun 07 We really enjoyed taking part in the Urchin survey in the Skomer Marine Reserve. It was our first stab at practical underwater surveying and the discipline of making several passes over the same terrain certainly made for a thorough creature hunt. Many thanks to Kate Lock for organising the event. |
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Lyme
Regis - Sea fans and sunset coral, Dorset Jun 07 It was a pleasure to return to Lyme Regis, doubly so since we dived from John Walker's boat Miss Pattie. John helped the group with their mission to assess the impact of scallop dredging on the seabed fauna, particularly the pink sea fan - the UKs largest coral. We found fans and sadly evidence of damage but there was no shortage of other wildlife and a chance to see sunset corals.See the See the Seasearch news page for more information |
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Holland - May 07 Very overdue but well worth a browse the cuttlefish are online at last! They join the other Dutch underwater life which has been on show for a while - sorry it's taken so long. Diving with the cuttlefish in Zeeland is an amazing experience, at least until other divers are attracted by your lights - some things are the same whatever country you dive in... |
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At the end of last year we returned to Indonesia spreading our time between Bunaken, Lembeh and a liveaboard via Halmerhera to Raja Ampat. There's a gallery for each part of the trip and even some bonus surface shots and panoramas. |
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Our first few days were spent relaxing on Bunaken Island with Twofish divers |
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...and then a few more at their place on Lembeh Island .... |
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...before we transferred to the confused luxury of Odyssea 1 for the main part of the trip. |
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Just in case you're curious here are some assorted surface pictures... |
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...I've separated the panoramas as they make a nice themed group by themselves |
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Our
first visit to the
northern part of Raja Ampat was aboard Shakti, all hail Cap'n
Dave... Raja Ampat, Shakti May 06 |
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...and
then a few days relaxing
on Kri Raja Ampat, Kri Island June 06 |
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Although
I thought the pygmy
seahorses were adorable it seems that the stunning views from the top
of the hill on Wayag were even more popular so here's a better version
and
some more panoramic views Raja Ampat, Panoramas May/June 06 |
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Slightly
less glamorously we
followed that
with a trip to North Norfolk. Weybourne is one of our favourite dive
venues, there's a small wreck and some gullies which are both packed
with wildlife. Sadly some club politics mean it was our last club trip
but we were able to savour our memories of better times whilst hunting
down nudibranches. Weybourne, Norfolk July 06 |
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Thailand and Myanmar December 05 |
 | Sipadan
and Kapalai,
November 2004 These Islands off Borneo are both amazing and represent the front line in diving tourism. Sipadan has been the place to go for a very long time but has been adversely affected by recent, clumsy moves to 'protect' it from further exploitation. Kapalai has made a virtue of neccessity and is both a good base to dive Sipadan and now a premier 'muck diving' destination in its own right. This is an old gallery rescued from the place it used to be. Sorry, only the thumbnails work. |
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Sulawesi, including
Bunaken and Lembeh, November 2004 Indonesia is perhaps the most exciting Tropical area to dive in at the moment - but that's not a very precise geographical description as with 17,000 Islands it is one of the most scattered archipelagos in the world. Years of diving couldn't cover all the variation available and luckily it is so hard to travel through the numbers of divers are low enough to be manageable - just! This is an old gallery rescued from the place it used to be. Sorry, only the thumbnails work. |
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Our
most complicated and
varied trip was to New Zealand in February and
March
2004. We
drove and dived
from
South to North NZ when the storms and floods permitted... Stewart Island , Otago Peninsula , Mount Cook , Akaroa , Kaikoura - whales and dolphins , Kaikoura - diving , Pupu Springs , Pohara - Eels! , Napier - City of Art Deco and worms + blown out in Whakatane , Hahei - hot water beach , Hahei - diving , Great Barrier Island - diving and Poor Knights - diving. Phew, it was Really quite a trip! |
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After that we needed a rest so we had a long weekend in Western Australia :-) diving Ningaloo Reef and having fun on the surface in Exmouth and Perth in March 2004. |
