Dived last Wednesday around Bigbury. Took 2 bass early on, couple of decent mullet and flat fish seen but left alone. Viz wasn’t great around 3m but was murky in places. Tide was now on the turn and made conditions quite tricky, caught in the rip so had to go with it. Ended up towards Thurlestone headland, deciding I needed the tide to ease so worked the gullies and took this nice 7lber. Viz dropped right off. Headed back towards the beach and followed a thornback for a good few minutes, decided early on not to take it as I had one previously, the only thing playing on my mind was the size of it, at a guess 15lb made the bigger bass look like a sandeel!
As I crossed the bay I could see torches up on the headland and closer to shore was an emergency vehicle, thinking it was police carried on towards shore. Walking out of the surf met by local coastguard amid reports of someone / craft struggling out in the bay!
After a short chat about my catch, we got back to why they had been called out, 5 lights seen close to rocks so thinking this wasn’t me, said my goodbyes and returned to the car. Whilst changing, the coastguard passed and informed me that now thought it was a small fishing boat possibly with nets out. Firstly I hadn’t seen one and would you be netting at that time close to reefs? Illegal netters? Been seen there many times before.
The Inshore lifeboat had been launched from Hope Cove and soon appeared in the bay. Headed off thinking ‘who could possibly think night dives are boring’ also thought when diving remote spots I may look into logging my dives with the coastguard. The thought of such resources being called out on a false alarm, is something I do not want on my conscience Even if the caller was genuinely concerned.
Checking Hope Cove lifeboat page, update states fishing vessel spotted close to rocks around far side of Burgh Island, possibly hiding?
lifeboat stood down, Guess they’d done all necessary checks. I will phone to follow up.