First Dive of the Year

This Sunday I managed to get my first dive of 2012 in. I know it is a bit late in the year but our dive club had been suffering some technical difficulties, mainly having  lots of eager divers but no air. Unfortunately our air compressor was down for the count and it kept failing the air test which left all of us high and dry.

About two weeks ago we all got the good news that we had air and that diving would be happening again soon. Anyway I signed up for one and like all of us had not been diving for a while it was decided that we should go for something in the shallow spectrum. So we decided to do a dive site called Inkwells.

The Inkwells dive site is close to Rosia bay on the western side of the Rock. It is a particularly easy dive as it is not very deep - the maximum depth is about 20m and it is a flat bottom with very little features. Some of you might say what a boring dive, but in Inkwells you are not looking for a shipwreck, caves or reefs but for artefacts that have been dumped there for the passed 200 years.

You can find a range of items like clay pipes, clay inkwells (which are quite the find) in many shapes and sizes. These are the more common things you will find in the site along with the countless beer and wine bottles you will come across. The true prizes are quite rare to find, such as: clay gin bottle (I am still looking for one myself), silverware and old fizzy drink bottles with a rounded bottom.

Even though this dive is an easy one, you do sometimes get cold as you don’t really move about a lot due to the fact that you spend more time digging for bits and bobs than swimming around. All items recovered should be declared at the Gibraltar Museum before you can claim it, just in case it is an important find. It is not the first time an important historical artefact has come out.

All in all was a lovely dive to start the year, the only down side is that I got a cold from it hence my previous post of “Diving and the cold”.