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Tony Reed is a passionate and highly experienced diver. We are so fortunate to have Tony associated with Scuba Blue; many of the photographs on the site are Tony’s and he is always willing to come along and help record the varied events and activities that go on at Scuba Blue.   Check out his brilliant website at https://cheapandcheerful.blog/ to see what brilliant photographs can be taken underwater using quite basic equipment.  Here Tony writes about a real bucket list dive destination – Truk Lagoon.

 

Chuuk lagoon, also known as Truk lagoon’ is on many diver’s bucket list, and rightfully so. The lagoon is home to a vast number of wrecks that were sunk in 1914 from Operation Hailstone. Hailstone was an operation that lasted 2 days and saw the destruction of the Japanese fleet by the US in retaliation from the attacks on Pearl harbour.

 

Chuuk Lagoon is one of a small group of islands which form the federated states of Micronesia. Located in the Pacific the distance from the UK makes it a task to get there!  My trip there was broken up into 2 days. From Gatwick to Istanbul – Japan where I stayed overnight, then from Japan to Guam and then on to Chuuk.

 

I travelled as light as I could and with different baggage allowances throughout the journey it worked out quite well with a quick swap over of a couple of items in Japan. I flew Turkish airlines from UK to Japan with a 40-kilo allowance. From Japan to Chuuk I flew United Airlines with a 23-kilo allowance but the hand luggage was only restricted to size not weight. So the Olympus TG4 was perfect to take with me! I also took a couple of GoPros for footage and wide shots! Along with a small but powerful video light I had what I needed. This is the setup I now use for my photography!

 

I arrived at midnight and got shown to my room where I quickly found my bed. I woke in the morning to a view that took my breath away..it was paradise..clear turquoise sea, blue sky, green grass and palm trees. I was excited about the day ahead. I made my way to the restaurant for breakfast walking through the lush green trees. There were lots to choose from on the menu which was nice. I also noticed all the information needed for new arrivals on the reverse of the menu so I had everything I needed.

 

After breakfast I got my dive kit sorted and headed over to the dive centre. The set up was really good with a guide and skipper allocated too a small group of divers. For most of the week, I was on the boat with 3 other divers Dean, Sue and Paul.

 

The boat journey to the dive sites is usually no longer than 25 minutes so it’s not long before you are descending down the buoy line. The first wreck was the Fujikawa maru which is a favourite to start with. The viz was pretty good and it wasn’t long before the dark shape below resembled the bow of a wreck. The excitement from the start of the holiday only got more intense as we explored the magnificent wrecks one by one. Trying to take in all the different artefacts that remain on each wreck is a challenge so having a couple of cameras helped a lot with that! Between the 2 dives in the morning, we made our way to Etton island for a surface interval where the locals climbed the trees and cut down coconuts for us all to drink from! it was a lovely way to spend the interval.

 

Etton island was a landing strip which resembled the shape of an aircraft carrier which confused the Americans as they kept bombing the island and reporting back stating it still had not sunk! There are a number of aircraft scattered around the end of the island. The betty bomber, the Emily seaplane, a Zero fighter and some wings of fighters. The betty bomber and Emily seaplane were great dives with quite a bit of life on them. The Zero fighter is in 6 meters of water so was a good surface interval snorkel.

 

Over the 8 days diving, I managed to do 18 different wrecks, some were done twice as a new group came through. A wreck playground for the metal fans but also plenty of life around the wrecks! Sharks, hundreds of fish shoals and a fair bit of macro! A great combination for the photographer. On the last day after diving, the guide took us to another island for a farewell BBQ! It was an amazing end to a fantastic 8 days diving! On the tiniest island miles from anywhere else sipping beer, eating good food sitting in a hammock watching the clouds go by! Perfect!

Scuba Blue concentrates on training recreational divers but that’s not to say that we don’t also take an interest in more technical diving and equipment.  Tim Clements of Vobster Quay Dive Centre provided a day introducing Scuba Blue Divemasters, Andy Braithwaite and Jonathan Madeley to Rebreather Diving.  An arm of the Vobster operation both manufactures and offers training on the VMS RedBare Closed Circuit (CCR) Rebreather.

 

Both Andy and I are used to the early morning start for a trip to Vobster Quay, but this morning was different; today we were going back to being the students. The night before we had both packed all our kit and had exchanged suitably excited messages about meeting up in the morning. We had been looking forward to this since a brief conversation with Tim at the Dive Show last year. While I was waiting for Andy I was thinking how lucky we are to live where we do, we have fantastic sea dives that can fill anyone’s needs, wrecks off the south coast, blue sharks out of Plymouth, seals at Lundy but also facilities like Vobster Quay all on our doorstep.

 

We arrived at Vobster nice and early and after getting the obligatory cup of tea, we met Tim, went upstairs to learn about the RedBare rebreather, have a general look at rebreather technology and some of the unique features on the RedBare. It was an interesting couple of hours and Tim spent time not only explaining the technology but also the reasoning behind it and how things had moved on in the last few years. Although there is no denying that there is a lot of “science” in rebreathers the morning passed quickly, both Andy and I came out of it with a much better understanding and we had a few laughs along the way.

 

Now it was the bit we had both been waiting for, our chance to dive with the RedBare rebreather. Tim spent some time adjusting the harness to try and place the counterlung on the rebreather in the correct position, as getting this wrong can lead to it needing an increased effort to either breath out or in. Once he was happy with the position, we were ready to go. The plan was to start in the enclosed water area to check that we had the correct weight and to practice some drills, mainly switching from the rebreather to the open circuit stage cylinder that we were carrying. The issue with switching is that you cannot just remove the rebreather mouthpiece as unlike a normal regulator it is not sealed so it will flood the whole system and will turn the sofnolime that is used to remove the carbon dioxide into oven cleaner, which is not a good thing. Therefore, before you remove the mouthpiece you need to turn the switch on the front so that it is closed and sealed. Once we had run through this drill and were happy that we could switch from the rebreather to the stage cylinder and back again, we were ready to go and explore.

 

Both Andy and I have done many dives at Vobster so we knew the planned route. What I was not ready for was the silence. The biggest change for me was buoyancy; the way a rebreather works means that breathing in or out does not change your buoyancy. (Tim had already warned us to go around the escort rather than just take a deep breath and rise over it as we normally would. I think his exact words were we would just run into the door!) The exhaled gas is not expelled as bubbles but is held in a counterlung (bladder) and then “cleaned” and reused. This meant that if you were swimming at a set depth then once your buoyancy was right it would stay perfect until you changed depth. Whilst this is great when you are not changing depth, it does cause an issue when you start to reduce your depth. As the gas in the counterlung will start to expand as the pressure on it reduces. This causes your buoyancy to become positive and means that there is no spare volume for your exhaled breath. To counteract this you breathe out through your nose thus removing gas from the system. In reality, this sounded much more complicated than it was in practice and both Andy and I soon got the hang of balancing the amount of gas in the system. I suppose the big question now is do I want one. Well that is easy. Yes!!! However, the current diving I do does not warrant that investment. Now if Vobster brought out a cheaper version that was aimed more at a recreational diver to a max of 40m with upgrade options then I think I may be tempted

 

If you want to take part in a similar experience then you can check out the details of the Vobster Rebreather Training. You can also chat with Jonathan and Andy at a Tuesday Scuba Blue pool session or via the Scuba Blue Club Members Facebook Group.  Find out about the club here

Here is a blog written by Scuba Blue’s first homegrown Divemaster (and soon to be Instructor), Andy Bluffield.

 

Well just as I thought the 2018 diving season was over I got a call from Scuba Blue’s ace photographer and videographer Tony Reed asking if I was up for a dive out of Falmouth with Atlantic Scuba. Well of course I was, I couldn’t think of a better way to help work off the Christmas mince pies and finish off the year in style.

 

A 5:30 am alarm call lead to a bleary-eyed meeting with Tony for our lift share down to Cornwall.  After a quick Costa coffee, we made good time on the quiet post-Christmas roads and arrived in good time for a pre-10:00 am ropes off fry up in the Mylor Cafe (so much for working off the mince pies!).

 

We met up with skipper, Mark Milburn, owner of Atlantic Scuba on the jetty.  He was wearing shorts (brrrrr), a smile and carrying a jerry can of two stroke.  Mark’s knowledge of the local area is outstanding; there are few who can match his intimate knowledge of Cornish diving.  Nothing was too much trouble when it came to making sure we had a great day – a freshly filled cylinder awaited Tony, who had been diving the previous day and been unable to get a fill beforehand (there are those who say he spends more time below water than above it!).

 

After a smooth trip out to the Manacles reef, Mark shot the wreck directly over the boilers enabling us to drop straight onto the SS Mohegan.  This ship sank in tragic circumstances in 1898 with the loss of 106 passengers and crew after making a navigational error which drove her onto the Manacles. As we descended onto the wreck, three huge boilers came into view. Visibility was over 5 metres and surface conditions screamed: “jump in, the waters lovely”. Swimming above the boilers you could see breaks in the skin and also notice that the middle boiler is, in fact, two smaller boilers back-to-back. These were covered in the life typically found on a UK dive. Most of the wreck is well broken up and cross sections are covered with an abundance of pink sea fans which hold out their arms perpendicular to the current to catch their current-borne food.

 

It was then back to Falmouth for a cylinder swap. Mark runs a rib which, although very comfortable, means that space is at a premium. After a quick turnaround, albeit with plenty of time for a hot chocolate, we were back on our way out to dive the Maerl beds.

 

This was my first experience of these beds and “Wow, just Wow”. Tony had told me to expect a floor of red twiglets that just went on and on and filled with life.  His description was spot on. Mearl is a term for a seabed densely covered by several species of red, hard skeletoned, seaweed, It is rock hard and, like most red seaweeds, needs lots of light to thrive so tend to be found in well lit, shallow waters. The beds at Falmouth are huge and the conditions are perfect due to a tidal flow that removes fine sediment but isn’t strong enough to break up the brittle maerl branches. Within these beds, layers of dead maerl build up with a thin layer of pink, living maerl on the top.  Mark explained how Mearl beds are such an important habitat for many different types of marine life that live amongst it and told us how it can be of importance to sustainable fisheries, providing nursery grounds for commercial species of fish and shellfish. It’s clear to see how the beds could be easily damaged and have declined substantially in some areas. Pressures on maerl beds include scallop dredging, bottom trawling, aquaculture and pollution. They are very slow to develop and are unlikely to return if removed or lost. The site is one of the largest maerl beds in south-west Britain and it was a privilege to dive them.

 

Despite being an experienced UK diver I know there are always new places to go, wrecks to explore, and underwater environments which are globally rare to investigate.  This was a great day but not untypical of what we lucky UK divers get to explore. If you are inspired to go on a similar trip, advance your training or even learn how to dive, get in touch with Scuba Blue. We love meeting other divers, training people to become divers and helping them to keep diving.  Check out our dive club.

 

Check out more of Tony Reed’s pictures at Cheap and Cheerful Photography and Videography and Mark Milburn’s dive centre in Falmouth, Atlantic Scuba.