Day 28 – Queenie Reef, Loch Creran near Oban

29 November

The idea for The Great Scuba Drive first came about when we both decided to complete our HSE Scuba qualification. The only course that we could find that matched our availability was at Puffin Dive Centre in Oban. Since we’d be travelling all the way from Cornwall, we decided not to rush the journey. Instead, we’d take a month to dive our way north, exploring as many sites as possible and shining a light on UK diving and especially in winter.

Our course starts on Monday and will run for three weeks, so today we wanted to choose a dive site close to Oban. We settled on Queenie Reef, located on Loch Creran, a site we’d both heard about and were excited to experience.

Loch Creran has been a Marine Protected Area since 2014 and also holds Special Area of Conservation status. It’s internationally recognised for its biogenic reefs, most notably the tube worm Serpula vermicularis, the only known living reefs of their kind in the UK, and unique in Europe. The loch is also home to flame shell beds, both habitats providing an intricate structure that supports a huge diversity of marine life.

When we arrived, the air temperature was just 4°C, and there was ice around the layby where we were kitting up. The water, at 7°C, felt distinctly cold, the lowest temperature we’ve encountered on the trip. Almost immediately, we noticed something strange: although Loch Creran is a saltwater loch, we could taste freshwater on our faces. That led to a brief discussion about our weighting, but we decided to persevere and see how it felt underwater.

For around 1.5 metres, the water was blurry, a shimmering layer where freshwater and saltwater mixed. Below that, the saltwater layer took over, and at depth the temperature rose to a more comfortable 12°C, and 10°C in the shallows.

We began the dive by following a solid rock headland, swimming east for about 60 metres at a depth of 7 metres. Along the way, we admired a rich variety of marine life: velvet swimming crabs, hermit crabs, brown crabs, shore crabs, and several species of starfish. Dropping over the edge of a wall to 12 metres, we crossed a sandy stretch and found another wall at 15 metres, which we followed around before looping back to the first one.

That wall was spectacular. It plunged down to around 22 metres, completely encrusted with oysters, clams, scallops, anemones, feather stars, brittle stars, urchins, common sunstars and sea squirts. It was vibrant and full of movement, one of the most colourful and diverse reef systems we’ve seen on the trip. Tiny gobies darted between the starfish and anemones, sometimes perching on top of starfish as if posing for photos.

Rico had a moment that Sophie missed while she was photographing a subject, he swung his torch beam upward and suddenly realised that they were surrounded by what he described as a “sea of goby faces,” all staring curiously back at him. He said it felt like he was standing in the coliseum and hoped the spectators were friendly.

Later in the dive, while Sophie was absorbed in taking photos, unbeknown to her, she had caught a clam in her fin. The clam, clearly unimpressed, swam away at speed, straight into Rico’s mask. A moment of comedy.

It was a wonderful dive: colourful, diverse, and full of character. We stayed underwater for 1 hour and 21 minutes, our longest dive of the trip so far. The only downside was the lingering chill from the icy freshwater entry; Sophie’s feet took quite a while to thaw afterwards!

Diving in Loch Creran was a privilege. To witness one of the UK’s most unique marine ecosystems was truly special. It reminded us why we started The Great Scuba Drive: to explore, to learn, and to show that adventure and discovery don’t require tropical waters.