Having a diving certificate, being passionate about marine life and having lived in Cornwall for the past few years, it was a bit of a crime to not have been diving (bar a single dive last year). Last week I had the opportunity to join some experienced divers and went for two dives. The first dive was at local spot Silver Steps in Falmouth. We did not go deep (8 meters or so) and could stay in for over an hour. We spotted some cuttlefish (too shy to be photographed), a Greater pipefish Syngnathus acus and two Snake pipefish Entelurus aequoreus. A picture (made with my recent Canon Powershot purchase) of me (looking rather angrily) holding the latter species:For the second dive, we went to Porthleven, west of the Lizard peninsula and sheltered from the easterly winds. It was hard to figure out where to best enter the water; east of the village the cliffs seemed a bit high. In the harbour itself we still had to clamber of some rocks and then had to swim out a bit first to stay out of the way of any passing boats:This dive site was prettier than the first one: there was a larger rock face covered by seaweeds (notably the large Desmarestia ligulata that was completely absent from Silver Steps) with a clean sandy bed beneath (loads of Two-spotted gobies around as always). Lobsters Homarus vulgaris seemed to be relatively common, as we did not particularly look hard but found two individuals (as well as a Spidercrab Maja squinado):

One of my dive buddies pointed out a fish, I enthusiastically but mistakenly chased a small Bib Trisopterus luscus; much to their bemusement they were actually pointing at a Red gurnard Aspitrigla cuculus. It was not shy at all:

Finally, when getting out of the water, amongst the Shannies I noticed a beautiful Montagu’s blenny Coryphoblennius galerita: