dive buddy on this dive decided to see what this fish could do - as it wasn’t for moving for us either. He pulled out his nine-inch long pencil torch, used for looking into nooks and crannies, and approached the fish menacingly…. but obviously not menacingly enough to frighten this poor creature - it just stared at him. Emboldened he got right up close to it and gave it a prod on its snout with his torch. It didn’t move - probably hoping we would give up and go away.
Undeterred, my buddy gave the inoffensive and somewhat tolerant angler fish a harder prod on its nose. He had obviously overstepped some unwritten law and gone one prod too far. With blinding speed, the anglerfish’s inoffensive semi-circular mouth suddenly transformed into a large oval hole and like lighting, it flicked off the bottom and attacked the offending torch.
The fish tried to take the whole torch in one go into its mouth getting the whole 1-2 inch diameter width of it a few inches down its throat – when it bit down however it encountered, probably for the first time, man-made hard plastics. I expected to see its teeth all fracture and fall out like a Tom & Jerry cartoon scene - but even though the attempt to crack the torch in two wasn’t a good idea for its dental care regime, it held on and simply wouldn’t let go.
My buddy waved his torch about trying to dislodge the fish from the end of it but it wouldn’t – it just hung on for grim life and he did not dare to try using his other hand to prise it off. If it could do this to his torch it could make a nasty job of a finger. Eventually after a degree of thrashing around the anglerfish obviously decided that it had done enough to further our diver training on “things not to touch underwater.” It let go and swam back down to the bottom where it turned round to face us and settled back down on the bottom. “You wanna try that again, laddie?” it seemed to be saying. If it was nursing a bad toothache it didn’t show. We beat a retreat, Angler Fish 1, Divers 0.
On another occasion we were swimming in a group of about 4 divers along the very bottom of some plunging cliffs looking into sub-sea caves when I saw my first bird flying underwater. This bird flapped its way down my bubble stream from the surface and swam right up to my mask homing in on the source of the bubbles, which it no doubt took for a shimmering feast of small fish. It got a shock when unexpectedly, it came face to face with a 6’ 2” Scotsman. It did an emergency brake in its flight through the water right in front of my face and stared at me for a second or two, no doubt trying to work out what this big, noisy, unusual visitor to its realm was doing. After working out that there was no food here, and that it may become food itself if it hung around, it beat its wings again and shot off towards the surface.
This bird was something of a vanguard, for as soon as it had disappeared, in quick succession, countless other birds came screaming into the water, plunging downwards and speeding through our group leaving a small trail of bubbles to mark their passing - as if someone had been spraying machine gun bullets down through the water towards us.
On a shore dive towards the end of the summer of 1984 I had my first incident where something went wrong under water. On a hot, lazy, blue summer Sunday we had driven to a car park at a local beauty spot, Cullykhan Bay. This small, picturesque bay, only a few hundred yards across, is surrounded on both sides by high cliffs and jutting headlands. At one time there had been a medieval fort on top of the westmost headland, from which a cannon had been recovered by archaeologists. There was rumour of another cannon lying underwater in the rocks and gullies at the foot of the headland and we had decided to have a dive at the foot of the headland, out at its end, to see if anything was indeed there.
Our small group of 6 divers drove to a car park high up on the top of the plateau surrounding the small bay - arriving as usual at about 10 am. We got dressed into our dive suits in pleasantly warm conditions. The rolling farmland and woodland of the Buchan countryside seemed stunningly green, the water a deep blue. Once fully kitted up, we then walked gingerly and in a rather ungainly manner, weighed down by our heavy gear, down a small path that meandered across the hillside down to the rocky beach.
Once at the bottom we strolled past a few startled holiday makers sending their groups of children into an excited chatter about the ‘deep sea divers’ that were walking through them en route to what they thought was a terribly exciting adventure.
Walking into the water to a depth that supported my body weight I bent down and pulled on my fins. One by one we flopped onto our fronts and started to snorkel out into deeper water, following the side of the cliffs on the west side of the bay.
Once we had got into about 10 metres and were approaching the end of the headland, we grouped up and then dumped all the air from our ABLJ’s. I sank slowly towards the bottom, a boulder field and kelp forest which, in the good visibility, I was able easily to see beneath me. Long kelp stalks were anchored to rocks, the fronds at their extremities waving in the gentle current.
As I sank I sensed the familiar increasing pressure on my sinuses but no matter how hard I tried to ‘pop’ my ears to equalise the pressure, I couldn’t. As I dropped down to 3 metres it became uncomfortable. By 5 metres down it was sore and I struggled to pop my ears to alleviate the pain.
The pain grew worse and worse as I sank deeper, becoming a numbing intense pain that filled my forehead inside my skull. I didn’t want to hold up the dive and with the ‘save face at all costs’ arrogance of youth, didn’t signal to tell any of the others that I was having difficulty.
Eventually we landed on the bottom. The pain was excruciating for me but I still managed to take a compass bearing to head out to the end of the headland where the cannon was rumoured to be.
We set off, heads down, finning out to sea. As we moved out to sea, so the seabed dropped away and it got slowly deeper. As the depth increased, so did the water pressure – and the pain in my forehead. The pain became the focus of my thoughts – but as I worked down the shelving bottom as the dive progressed, I found that the pain slowly eased. Perhaps, I thought, the effort of finning vigorously had helped clear my ears – or perhaps the increased pressure of air had forced its way through whatever sinus blockage I had.
‘Nature always tries to equalise’ was a rule taught to me at secondary school. The higher pressures now working on me, had strained to equalise with the lower atmospheric pressure in my sinal cavity. Eventually, somehow, the higher-pressure air had forced its way past the blockage and the pain left me.
We finned forward, winding our way through the large boulders. Here and there we encountered large kelp forests blocking our way. The large 10 feet long fronds at the uppermost ends of the kelp billowed in the gentle current and snagged at everything that protruded from your rig, wrapping themselves around your knife or your tank. We swam right down to the bottom of the kelp stalks and found that once you got below the 10 feet long waving fronds and got in amongst the stalks, there was plenty clear space between the stalks to swim through with your chest close down onto the rocks, underneath the carpet of fronds.
Although we searched in and around the large boulders and potholes at the end of the headland, we didn’t find the fabled cannon. Eventually we turned and made our way back into the bay and headed towards the shore. As I moved back up into slightly shallower water the pain in my sinuses returned. This time it seemed that the air in my sinuses was at a higher pressure than the water pressure around me. It wanted to get out to equalise but couldn’t because of the same blockage that had caused the trouble on the way out. It was exact the opposite situation from the descent.
Once we got back into a depth of about 10 metres, the dive leader decided that the group would surface, check where we were and snorkel back the last part to the shore. Rising straight up slowly from the seabed, the pain suddenly got so intense that I almost bit my mouthpiece off. In silent agony I screamed into my mouthpiece.
As I slowly approached the surface, the pain suddenly
