long drives from around Yorkshire and were ready on the Monday morning for our first set of dives on the Poulmic and the Glen Strathallen wrecks. The Poulmic yielded a few congers and small crawfish, but no octopuses. The Glen Strathallen was the same, until the very end of the dive, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye swimming past me, and turning around saw this was a large common octopus jetting along with its arms trailing behind it.
Proof in the picture
As I’ m not a photographer I quickly looked back for my dive buddy Tim to get a picture. Unfortunately, he was already at the bottom of the line by the boiler, and by the time I got his attention the beast was gone. Back on the boat my observation was met with the usual level of diver scepticism – no photo, no proof! The same thing happened on the very next dive on the Rosehill, where I found another octopus tucked into the engine block. Luckily, the day after that I was vindicated by others in the group not only finding, but photographing an octopus on the Maine. Thereafter, we had further sightings, including two at Hand Deeps and one on Fairyland Wall.
Crawfish on wreck
Common octopus
PHOTO: ROB BINNS PHOTO: ROB BINNS
Pink sea fan with sea fan nudibranchs
PHOTO: TIM WAISTELL
The common octopus wasn’ t the only unusual marine animal( for the UK) we saw during the trip. While at 20m on the north-east side of the Eddystone, my eyes were drawn to a smallish, elongated pale coloured fish with distinctive dark vertical stripes and longitudinal white lines. I was flummoxed for a minute, then thought‘ that’ s a comber’, having seen them regularly during dives in at various sites in the Med.
I also thought I need to get an image of the fish, as I’ d never heard of them being seen in UK waters. I frantically waved at
Tim to photograph it, but by the time I’ d conveyed this to him, it had hidden itself under a rock. Back on the boat a quick search on my phone confirmed( to me at least) that is was indeed a comber, Serranus cabrilla, and I showed the images around, asking that if anybody else were to see one that they try and get a pic.
Later that evening in the hotel I looked through the Baldock and Dipper Seasearch Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland book( published in 2023) and found mention of the comber in the‘ Changing fish distributions’ section, saying that although
Common comber Tompot blenny
PHOTO: MARK WALTERS PHOTO: MARK WALTERS
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