On 12th September 2006 I returned to Brighton with Graeme “Spotty” Hastings to dive the local pier. This had been intended as another Boys’ Day Out with Spotty and Chris Baker but Chris had been unable to join us.

Brighton Pier, formerly known as the Palace Pier is 530 metres long and after eight years’ work, was completed in 1899. Spotty and I entered the water to the east side of the pier and finned a short distance out. The visibility underwater was initially only 1.5 metres and we could not find anything of interest. As we finned out further the visibility improved to 2.5 metres and I saw a Spider Crab which Spotty was oblivious to. I pushed it gently in the direction of Spotty until it was directly under his left hand. As luck would have it, at that very moment he reached down, without looking, and recoiled in horror as he inadvertently touched “something that moved”. I flooded my mask laughing. Continuing southwards along the pier Spotty spotted a Cuttlefish, the first of numerous sightings. I was really surprised as I had not expected to see any Cuttlefish, let alone so many. Next we caught sight of the silhouette of a large Eel disappearing into the poor visibility and then Spotty came across a small Eel in the debris on the sea bed. Upon closer investigation, Spotty found several other small Eels. Male Eels can grow up to 50 centimetres long, females up to one metre long but these Eels were much smaller. While Spotty and I photographed the Eels, a Cuttlefish circled us almost as if puzzled as to why it was no longer the centre of attention.

As Spotty had not signalled me to advise that he had only half a tank of air left, I intended to advise him when I had only 100 bar of air left so that we could begin our return to the shore. However I was so keen to photograph the Eels that I carried on taking photographs until I had only 80 bar of air in my 12 litre tank. At this point I apologetically indicated to Spotty that we would have to turn back immediately. I was puzzled by Spotty’s response which seemed to be an indication that had only 40 bar of air left in his 15 litre tank. I assumed that he meant 140 bar. Spotty repeated the signal, he did indeed have just 40 bar of air at which point, for the second time on this dive, I flooded my flooded mask laughing. So Spotty had been even more obsessed with taking photographs than me! Of course we were not in any danger as we were only in a depth of 8.8 metres and could have surfaced immediately. But we chose to fin back to the shore, buddy breathing when Spotty had only 10 bar of air left. A very enjoyable day in Brighton.