After a fairly cold and baron Easter trip last year we decided to head to West Bay this time. We haven’t been there as early in the season as this during my time in the club so I was a bit worried that there may not be much life about yet and also concerned that the weather may let us down. I needn’t have fretted. The weather was glorious with perfect sea conditions and the sites we dived were amass with all different varieties of life.

My favourite dive was the Sawtooth ledges where we tried out a new entry point and were rewarded with a mass of pink sea fans (housing plenty of sea-fan sea slugs), the rare and beautiful sunset cup coral and, pleasingly, lots of large crayfish. Crayfish have been really struggling for the last 30 years so I hope this is the start of a recovery. There were plenty of fish about too, most notably the delightful cuckoo wrasses and curious tompot blennies. We also enjoyed fantastic dives on the St Dunstan, the Baygitano and East Tennants Reef. 

One of the highlights of the trip was seeing Igor and Marcos qualify as Sports Divers and seeing several people building up a bit of boat handling experience. It’s great when people progress their skills as it really helps the club – as well as being fun! It was also great to see Raf back diving with the club after a few years out – I hope he enjoyed the trip as much as I did.

The original plan was to dive on the Monday but we got a spot of engine trouble so we decided not to push our luck and instead we enjoyed a lie in and a final ice-cream before getting an early start on the road home.

West Bay at Easter? Definitely a successful experiment!