In April 2007 Peter Sharrad and Dave Wood and I travelled to Selsey. In the absence of my Nikon D200 which had a minor problem, I took my old Olympus 5060. And I also took my brand new Bare XCD2 Tech dry suit and the same weights as I had worn with my now unrepairable Polar Bear dry suit. A silly mistake. I was far too buoyant. Even with no air in either my BCD or dry suit I had to fight to get down from the surface. With a strong onshore breeze the visibility in the shallows was poor so we finned out beyond Selsey Pier and the underwater visibility improved markedly. I saw butterfish, a tompot blenny, various wrasse and a pipefish but it was Dave who towards the end of the dive hit the jackpot, spotting a large lumpsucker. Unfortunately I was finding it increasingly difficult to stay down but Peter and Dave helped me by loading three largish pebbles into my BCD and Pete gave me one kilo from his weight belt. Despite my buoyancy woes I managed to get some hastily taken shots of the lumpsucker but I so wished I had my Nikon D200 and my old drysuit.
So only one week later I returned with Dave and Peter and the correct weights for my Bare dry suit. Several days of a persistent strong breeze had affected the visibility and although we searched long and hard, there was no sign of the lumpucker. Bizarrely we came across three dead dogfish but had no idea what had caused this.
Two years later, in April 2009, Dave and Sharon Meadows and I dived the pier once more. There was an on-shore stiff breeze which made the entry “somewhat interesting” in the heavy swell. Sharon and I became separated from Dave who then aborted the dive. Hugging the seabed, Sharon and I endeavoured to fin away from the shore, the underwater visibility being only 0.5 to 1.5 metres at best. We had finned a fair distance before Sharon indicted the swell was making her feel nauseous and we too then aborted the dive. Subsequently we all agreed - the highlight of the day was undoubtedly an excellent dinner at the White Swan, on our way back to Kent!