March. My first dive of the year on Dover Harbour West Wall was a solo dive to familiarise myself with a new Scubapro BCD. With visibility of 0.5 to 1.0 metres and a steady leak in my Polar Bear dry suit in 8 degrees water, it was probably just as well that I did not have high expectations. I saw a variety of crabs, a couple of lobsters and two pogges but photography was all but impossible and by the end of the dive I feel pretty cold as the lower half of my body was by then totally sodden from my drysuit leak.

April. With the Easter weekend beckoning, my dry suit repaired and perfect weather conditions forecast, I met Chris Powell at Dover Harbour West Wall. Unfortunately the underwater visibility had deteriorated. Occasionally it was about 0.5 metres but mainly no better than 0.25 metres. I could just make out my dive computer, there was certainly no point in turning my camera on. My Polar Bear dry suit repair soon failed. Water started trickling in through my right-hand glove and after a short while I could also feel it entering the lower half of my dry suit. At least it was now 9 degrees. Later I contacted my Channel Divers buddy Pete Sharrad to advise him how poor the visibility was. He was pleased! He wanted to take some novice divers on a low visibility dive and so took them the next day. Shockingly, shortly after starting the dive they came across the body of a young man who had committed suicide two weeks earlier - Chris and I had been diving next to his body the previous day but had been oblivious in the appalling visibility.

July. The month was proving to be one of the wettest Julys on record and the awful weather had badly restricted local shore diving. But amazingly Paul Hymers and I enjoyed visibility of 3 to 4 metres in an impromptu dive on Dover Harbour West Wall seeing a pipefish, spiny squat lobsters, common lobsters and tompot blennies. Enthused I returned the next day for a solo dive, taking my 105mm lens and was rewarded with tompot blennies, black gobies, leopard-spotted gobies, common prawns, spiny lobsters and a dragonet.

August. For the third consecutive day I dived Dover Harbour West Wall, this the first of eleven August dives on this site. With superb topside weather, a water temperature of 17 degrees and underwater visibility approaching 4 metres I felt I was in Uptopia as I solo dived, photographing common lobsters! Four days later I returned for another solo dive but with a moderate breeze the visibility had dropped to 2 metres. Armed with my 60mm lens, I photographed tompot blennies, leopard-spotted gobies, common lobsters and common prawns. After about 90 minutes I decided that I would only fin a few more metres further along the wall before turning back when I came across a five-bearded rockling caught on a discarded fish line. I had never seen a five-bearded rockling before. It had a long slender body and fringe-like first dorsal fins.  The second dorsal fin and single anal fin were both long and it had five barbells, one on the chin, a pair just above the upper lip and another pair just beneath these near the tip of the snout. It was clearly going to take some time to cut it free, time I did not safely have. So reluctantly I left it but ten hours later returned. There was no sign of the rockling. Slack arrived with a marked deterioration in the visibility and a lot of debris in the water and it was then that I caught sight of the rockling hiding in a deep recess, the snagged fishing line preventing it from getting in any further.  I gently pulled the rockling out, cutting some but not all of the line from it. Suddenly it made a bolt for freedom, catching me by surprise. Its new hiding place was much deeper in the recess and I could not reach the remaining line attached to it. If only the rockling could have known that I just wanted to help it. Reluctantly I had to leave it to its fate. I dived the wall eight more times in August in varying conditions, all of these solo dives except two, one with Roger Still, the other with Paul Hymers. I photographed a butterfish, common lobsters, common prawns, cuttlefish, edible crabs, Leach’s spider crab, tompot blennies, plaice, spiny squat lobsters, a topknot, wrasse and velvet swimming crabs. Solely for fun I left a work computer hard drive on one of the walls underwater edges for a week. The ability of computer experts to recover data had been a hot topic so even though the drive had been already wiped I thought some corrosive salt water could only assist the elimination of confidential information! Not an idea that will catch on. One dive turned risky, a group of irresponsible kids trying to hook me on their fishing lines as a jet ski buzzed noisily overhead. Hooks dropped down all around me, being drawn towards me. One caught my glove ripping it, another hooked my BCD and the fisherman then tried to reel me in. Complaining to them afterwards they claimed that, even though my scuba tank would have been clearly visible, they thought I was a 2 metre shark. I was shocked and angry.

October. One week after Eve returned home from a month in Kings College Hospital, London I was able to leave her with friends for a few hours to enjoy a dive - it felt good to have this break but little did I know that this dive would be my final dive on Dover Harbour West Wall.  The BBC had reported that a kayak voyage from Dover to France with escort boat was planned and by chance this set off as I began my dive.  Despite the publicity there was only one other spectator on the beach. The wind conditions had brought “dirty water” from the Thames and the underwater visibility was poor. Prior to this dive I had completed 13 consecutive dives of 100 minutes or more and I would have liked to have continued this sequence but in these conditions it would have been masochistic!