Penzance, The Stannock & Low Lee Ledges

Arriving early at Lamorna Cove we met Nik and her Chris just leaving. They told us it was already full there and we were going to base ourselves once more at Penzance. This was very lucky because there was no mobile phone signal at Lamorna.

There were three waves today and I was fortunate enough to be on two of them. Midday I dived with Chris G at The Stannock, a reef to the west of Mousehole. [Thanks Peter for the air]. We made a swift descent to 24m. Looking around there was a lot of fish – the most I’d seen – cuckoo, ballan and corkwing wrasse; and others. Chris with his torch helped me take some of the delicate sea-fans on the bottom, and I managed a blurry sequence of Chris with a very big spider crab. We found brain coral, widely fluted and delicate looking but actually hard and horny. Everywhere there were things to see and wonder at. I thought how easy it would be to loose track down here.

Back on shore for a good surface interval we managed to get some tanks filled at Bill Bowen’s place on the Pier. The previous day there had been a problem with the compressor, and the Hayle dive shop had been inundated.

Now, my second dive was something different. We were going to find Low Lee Ledges and buddied with Andrew, I was to lead. Anne boat-handled and we found the ledges just west of the east cardinal marker. We dropped in and down. A minor tangle with the shot was easily sorted, and we continued the descent. Watching us as it swam over a big rounded boulder, was a huge dogfish - a shark! We sent up the blob, and set off for a look round. The visibility was good in the distance some interesting sticky up bits to swim round, so we made for these. There were plenty of fish, a variety of wrasse, and a rather lonely pollack, and many of the animals we’d seen already. I gave my torch to Andrew and we took some pictures of a big yellow ‘dragon’ sponge [it's actually Cliona celata, a ’boring sponge’] surrounded by masses of tiny blue anemones. Swimming around the rocks the scenery was really good - a crescent of rocky pinnacles rising out of the sand, and around and about were nets and cable, crusty boulders, cuckoo wrasse, starfish and urchins - magic.

[Later Chris asked if we’d seen the cannon at the bottom of the shot – but we'd missed it completely].

When I was down to 80 bar it was time to leave (Andrew had loads of air), so signaling, we left for the surface. On our practice safety stop at 6 metres, we drifted very slowly over the flattish reef summit and looked down at the starfish and urchins. Surfacing into the sun we signaled OK, our mates and the boat gloriously silhouetted; I was elated. I had led my first sea dive.