got out sunday evening about a few miles west of ballyvaughan in clare. tide had just turned. the area had a small pier with a slip, which didn't seem to be used by any boats (in other words very handy).
brought a friend, who we'll call Lenny, who was using my small 55cm.
so we weren't long in when i noted the relative lack of decent sized fish. there were however an abundance of small pollock, nd tiny wrasse.
i also noted a lot of velvet swiming crabs. i know there is a large fishery for these in this country, but i had never eatten them, so i decided to take some.
they're small, but christ they have balls. they're fairly fast as well and swim away if they realise they can't fight you. but they all seem to try the 'lets fight the large human first' approach. this rooting around in the kelp and looking around under little ledges turned out to be a vastly enjoyable dive. baagging 15 velvet crab, which were consumed with friends about 2 hours later. i also located a brown crab which couldn't be moved from his hiding place, and i got a glimpse of a lobster. while peering into a hole ( small hole) i could see a single black leg. when spear tip was introduced into the hole, the creature made off further in, and i don't ahve a torch, so that was the last i saw of him.
two scoobies showed up aswell. they started their dive from our entry point on the slipway, and headed west, more or less in the same pattern we had. they turned and started heading back to the slipway not long after passing us. i was diving away chasing crabs, when i noticed that one of the divers was on the surface a bit away from me,( but only one fin was up in the air) my first thought was ' strange place to be duck diving, as it was shallow 4m tops), but then i realised that what the problem was. the poor girl had on a drysuit which was too big for her, and she had inverted, all the air rushing into the legs of the suit.
i finned over as fast as i could, gave her the ok sign, sign not returned. she was just after managing to right herself, and control her bouyancy (inflate). she had a broken fin strap, which i think happened in her efforts to right herself. i calmed her down, introduced myself, and got her finning calmly on her back towards the slipway,talking to her the whole way.
where was her buddy you ask?
the idiot had finned ahead for god know's what reason about 50 m , and was way out of sight behind the pier, leaving his buddy in a potentially disastrous situation.
she got to the slipway anyway, and was ok. her buddy was already ashore and didn't have much to say for himself.
seriously i don't think i've ever seen someone put another person in such a dangerous situation. i was not impressed by him. i have to say i'm not angry man, but i was really pissed off at that guy, and communicated it by practically ignoring him.
if i was her i would never ever dive in his company again.
turned out she had wanted to end the dive, as the drysuit was not hers, was too big and she was having difficulty using it. so he knew this, but blasted on ahead of her regardless.
ok rant over.
was great to get that off my chest.
anyways, was great to know that i could in fact handle a rescue situation which was not simulated. i was going for the girl's bcd inflator when she got there herself.
and on the up side Lenny spotted some mullet which hee reported as being very big and fat looking. sadly my 55 let us down again and he couldn't get a shot off.