Cuckoo (or Ballan?) Wrasse

Thankfully the weather today was a bit better than yesterday, so time spent on the boat was much more pleasant.

The first dive was on the Thesis - that illustration is by blipper MaxEllis. Since that was drawn most of the remaining plates have fallen off, so the ribs are exposed most of the way back to the stern. Still, these drawings are invaluable in planning a dive to get the most out of a wreck! We went all the way down to the stern (32m) then came back up inside, past the engines and boilers.

We finished up right on top of the bow, where this cuckoo wrasse seemed very interested in us. Some divers feed these wrasse by breaking open urchins, and I suspect the broken urchin shells mean this has been happening here. He seemed pretty tame, and was happy to pose for the camera. I hope he wasn't too disappointed when I didn't kill an urchin for him...

The second dive of the day was a nice ferret around in the shallows with MrsCyclops - mainly photographing scallops. I'm sure she will blip one in due course.

Thanks to everyone who helped to make this a good weekend in spite of the somewhat wet climatic conditions... Look out for underwater blips from sands and chrisugden who were also there!