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> travel > travel features > 2004 spring special | appeared in DIVER April 2004 | ||||||||
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2004 Spring Special Intro | The Ore stone | Hodge Close | Johnstone's Hole | Crab City | Bracklesham Bay Crab City Weymouth, Dorset by John Liddiard |
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Lots of good offshore wrecks are accessible from Weymouth, but one of the problems every diver encounters is a lack of choice in sites for the second dive. It is a rare day when you have enough time to wait for the next slack water, and there isn't a fantastic range of sites that can be dived at any state of the tide. I have seen most of the usual second-dive sites God knows how many times. So when Len Hurdiss was bringing his Autumn Dream back round Portland Bill and suggested that the second dive was a drift at Crab City, I was in two minds about whether I could be bothered to get wet again. It's one of those mysteries of diving that many dive sites overseas are named by divers, yet in Britain we tend to stick to the names on the charts. Abroad we get names like "Coral Gardens", "Shark Point" and "Tarpon Alley". Here we have real names such as "Lulworth Banks", "Grove Point" or "Balaclava Bay". That's what made up my mind to dive. I had drifted north between Portland and the Shambles bank a few times before, but that had been many years ago and this was the first time I had heard it called Crab City. It seemed that since I last dived there, local skippers had christened the site. Len picked the spot and in we went, SMBs in tow. The seabed consisted of gently undulating rocks and patches of gravel between 22-24m, the predominant covering being shiny black mussels. I became neutrally buoyant, chilled out and drifted along, keeping an eye out for edible crabs. After all, Len had said, that was how the site got its name. My interest in edible crabs, I should point out, is in taking their photographs, not collecting them for dinner. I don't eat seafood, whether collected by divers, bought in a shop or served in a restaurant. Funny thing was, I didn't see any edible crabs - or scallops, for that matter. What I did see were spider crabs. They were picking their way around wherever I looked. Clearings in the mussel beds were fairly bright and colourful, especially in contrast to the uniform black of the mussels. The colour came from brown hydroids, orange and yellow sponges, white dead men's fingers and a variety of dahlia anemones. Such scenes appear far more impressive on a wall than on a flat seabed, despite the only real difference being 90¡. If this was a wall, it would be a really good wall. Maybe I should try swimming along on one side and let relativity take care of it. At the edge of a clearing, I found a plaice. I had drifted past but the fish with the orange spotty coat had fluttered off before I could bring the camera to bear. Switching my attention from crabs to plaice, I soon found others. Its amazing how well plaice blend in, thanks to skin the colour of hydroids, spots the colour of sponges and an outline that merges into the overall texture. Their camouflage may be clever, but plaice themselves are not. Where they come to rest with a fin or nose partly overlapping the black mussels, the camouflage becomes an advertisement and gives them away. If I got down on the mussels and approached slowly, it was easy to get close without spooking them. Every now and then I found an anomaly, such as the gang of whelks encircling a small hillock in a clearing. Why should they be here, together, as opposed to anywhere else on the mussel bed? The hermit crabs certainly felt no such constraint, taking their whelk-shell homes wherever they wanted across the mussels. Another anomaly was the fact that starfish, usually found munching mussels, were conspicuous by their absence. Such things change with the seasons. When I next visit, there could be a population explosion of starfish and the whole balance will have changed. It was a successful dive and I surfaced with 36 pictures. Other divers surfaced with a crab or a few scallops for dinner, so everyone was happy. My participation showed that, when it comes to dive-site names, I am as susceptible to branding and marketing as the next man. And this dive also followed the usual adage about naming dive sites - I didn't see a single edible crab! In Weymouth boats pick up from the marina floats in front of the fire station, from across the bridge at Weymouth Quay by the Sailor's Return pub or further along the cobbled Old Harbour area by the Old Rooms Inn. Wherever you're boarding, it's worth arriving early. Call Autumn Dream on 01305 786723, www.deepsea.co.uk/boats/autumn_dream) and you can get a fill at the Old Harbour Dive Centre (01305 760888). Contact Weymouth Tourist Information 01305 785747 for details of accommodation in the area, from campsites to hotels. |
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 A hermit crab hangs out in Crab City  a gang of whelks at a clearing in the mussel bed  a poorly camouflaged plaice  a spider-crab | |||||||
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Intro |
The Ore stone |
Hodge Close |
Johnstone's Hole |
Crab City |
Bracklesham Bay 
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