MacDuff Marine Aquarium

I had a lovely day on Saturday: I went diving at the MacDuff Marine Aquarium.  It's not a very big dive - the tank is roughly 20 ft wide and 16 ft deep - but it's fuller of sea-life than anywhere else I've dived in the UK. 

All the inhabitants are native species.  There are large cod and their ling cousins; black rays; plaice; dogfish and bull huss (both are types of shark); several huge wolf-fish, ash grey with stripes and fangs; an enormous plaice about the size of my dining-table who snapped at other fish that came near while she was being fed; two varieties of wrasse, beautifully coloured and marked; and two conger eels that I hand-fed (no, I still have both hands; I was holding fillets of mackerel for them to grab). 

It's the closest I'm ever likely to get to that size, type and quantity of fauna in UK waters.  We've fished our seas practically to death and what's left is understandably shy, especially if you're blowing bubbles at the time.  Many fish view bubbles as a sign of aggression, but sometimes they enjoy them: a couple of plaice were swimming through the columns of bubbles from the aeration machinery, enjoying the tickling sensation.

The aquarium has several smaller tanks, with beasties whose native habitat varies from rock-pools to deep water.  One tank held baby jellyfish; another had lump-suckers, weird box-shaped fish that grip onto rocks with suckers on their bellies. 

The facility exists for education, and they do three "feeding shows" a week throughout the year (more in high summer) where you can watch divers interact with the fish. The kiddies were loving it, waving like mad at us through the glass, their little mouths going "ooh" and "aah" and grinning as we waved back.  Before the dive I found watching the fish through the glass fascinating, as you see bits of them you'd never get a look at otherwise - the underneath of flatfish, for example, which just lie in the sand and pretend they're not there when divers are around.  I'd never seen one actually swim before; they're very graceful, undulating like rays.

Sadly, as the Aquarium is owned by the Council, there have inevitably been funding cuts.  They've had to reduce staff and some exhibits are getting rather tired and crumbly.  However they're looking to recruit staff for the summer holidays, so if you're a diver looking for a summer job there's an opening for you up on the Moray Firth.  No previous experience required, no expertise except that you have to be a BSAC Sports Diver or equivalent to dive in the tank.  What they need is folk with people skills, who can talk to the kids and their parents, help with the feeding and selling in the shop, and generally make themselves useful.  Please pass the information on if you know anyone appropriate!

Even if you don't, if you're anywhere near Banff/Peterhead/Nairn go and visit the Marine Aquarium - it's a great day out if you have any interest in sea creatures.  I learnt a lot: fish ID had never been my strong point, but I'm never going to mistake any of the fish I saw on Saturday.

Coastguards

At this time of year dive clubs up and down the country are trying to find interesting people to talk to members on club nights.  Yesterday our club had a talk from the Sector Manager of Montrose Coastguard station, which was fascinating.

I knew very little about what the coastguard service does, except that they're on the end of a radio if anything goes wrong.  But they do more than just Search and Rescue at sea; they also check boats and can impound them if they're considered unsafe, do flood rescues inland, deal with cargo lost overboard and check on marine pollution.

The UK coastguard covers all sea areas half-way to the next seaboard, so in the north Atlantic their patch goes half-way to Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and so on.  That's a huge area to monitor, still less to get shore-based vessels to, so they use other boats in the vicinity (referred to as "rescue assets").  Any vessel, even a rowing boat if it has a radio, has to respond to a Mayday call.  It may not be able to help - a high-sided container ship wouldn't be particularly useful in a man-overboard emergency, for example - but it can monitor and be an "eye on the ocean" for the coastguard on the radio back home.

One big question concerned the closure of most of the present 18 stations around Britain.  The press has made this out to be A Very Bad Idea, but our speaker was all in favour.  At the moment most stations have around 3 staff on duty who spend most of the shift waiting for a call; when one does come in they have to deal with it by themselves, and 3 people are not many in that situation.  Under the new system there will be fewer thumb-twiddlers and more co-operation, as all the stations will be connected, so it should be much more efficient all round.

Montrose station have a particular affinity for mud.  Montrose Basin is a tidal lagoon which becomes a mud-flat with a river running through it at low tide.  If anyone gets caught in the mud it sucks them down, up to their armpits, and the coastguards then used to have to haul them out bodily against the suction.  Now they use a fire extinguisher to force air down through the mud, which loosens it around the body, making rescues much easier.  They haul people across the mud in basket stretchers, using them like sleds to spread body-weight.

They've recently been teaching the same technique to firefighters in Dundee, who have Dundee airport on their patch.  If you're not familiar with Dundee airport, it's tiny - so are the aircraft that land there, by commercial standards - and sits right at the edge of the Firth of Tay [Firth = estuary].  At low water there's miles of mud.  If a plane misses the runway, there will be 25-30 people stranded and, potentailly, sinking into the mud.  Coastguards usually only have to deal with individual strandings; the firefighters needed to know how to cope with lots at once.  That training must have been an interesting exercise to watch.

We divers were given lots of good advice on what to do while awaiting rescue.  One that particularly sticks in my mind: if you've got separated from your boat and you see a rescue helicopter coming over, take off your hood because a) it's probably black and therefore invisible in the water and b) they use heat-seeking infra-red devices and your hood is designed to keep the heat in.  At night the decision's a bit more difficult, because most hoods these days have reflective strips on them which the 'copter's light might pick up - so do you leave it on for the light or take it off for the heat-seeking doodahs?  Hmm...

Anyway - "dive safe" and with a bit of luck you'll never need to take that decision!

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Hazards of winter diving

This is a very frustrating time of year for divers living in northerly latitudes, who prefer diving in the sea rather than in quarries and other inland waterways.  You arrange a day's diving: check the tides, find an interesting-looking site, get your buddies signed up, book the boat, or make sure your own boat is seaworthy and the trailer is safe; maybe you even book accommodation.

Then the weather turns nasty and the day's blown out.  It's happened to me twice already this year (though I must admit other people did all that prep work both times).

I have a pool-tested drysuit, but I want to check it really is dry now and I can't do that in 3.6 metres of water.  I have all my kit clean, dry and lightly oiled (well, I've rubbed beeswax along my drysuit zip and siliconed the O-rings of my torch and camera housing, anyway).  I've packed the whole caboodle into the car twice and had to take it out again.

All I want to do is get wet - and not in chlorinated water.  A pool is no substitute for the real thing (the wildlife's not up to much, for a start, and what you do find in there doesn't bear thinking about).

Our main problem has been the wind, as it was for so much of last year.  Last weekend the forecast was for Force 4-6, with gusts of up to 45mph.  That's no fun, nor is it safe for wee rubber boats or divers.

In the event I was quite glad we didn't try diving last Saturday.  As I walked my dogs in the woods (to avoid the worst of the wind-chill) the sleet came on.  The very thought of being out in a small boat in the middle of the North Sea in sleet is seriously unappetising.  There's no protection from the elements in a RIB and a drysuit can only provide so much weather-proofing: rain's bad enough, but sleet is beyond horrid.

So I'll possess myself in what little patience I can muster and pray for a sunny, calm, dry spring and summer with brilliant viz, in total contrast to last year up here.  One out of four would be good, but I'm going for the set.  We're due a break....

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