I was lucky enough to finish off my diving for the year in warmer waters than of late with some diving at El Cabron, Gran Canaria. At 20 degrees C, the water was a whole 10 degrees warmer than it was in the Clyde a couple of weeks ago when we were diving the wreck of the Akka amongst other things, but it was still good to be wearing a fairly thick wetsuit with hood!
As well as a nice little shoal of Bastard Grunt (that’s what they’re called, not a sudden bout of profanity), there was a lot of the usual life you see when diving around the Canaries. A Tiger Moray was hiding in a crevice, a cluster of Squid eggs were hanging from the underside of another and there were a pair of Cleaner Shrimps who had set up their cleaning station next to a Giant Anemone (there was no cleaning going on, possibly due to the Christmas holiday 😉 ) I also spotted a Canarian Lobster, which is a species endemic to the area but doesn’t bare too much of a resemblance to the Lobsters we are used to seeing whilst diving in the UK.
The dive centre had even set up a diving themed nativity scene and the festive period wouldn’t have been complete without a Christmas Tree! The last time I saw one of them on a dive was in Boddam Quarry and the water temperature was a lot less than 20 deg!
These dives brought my total for the year up to a fairly respectable 60 – not bad given a slow start to the year. Lots more diving planned for 2013 already with the problem at the moment being when to fit in all the different ideas and options – not a bad problem to have! 🙂