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Diving the Highlands of Scotland
By Cal Major
When I moved up to the Highlands of Scotland, one of the first questions my mum excitedly asked was “do you want to go diving with me in Kinlochbervie next year?!”
Kinlochbervie is almost as far North as you can go in mainland Scotland. It’s just an hour up the road from where I live, and so I jumped at the chance of exploring the depths of my home, with my mum.
My mum is kind, patient and empathetic. She possesses incredible attention to detail, and is very safety-oriented. She also makes an excellent banana cake, and rarely travels anywhere without copious amounts of snacks for everyone she might come into contact with. These are all skills I consider exceptionally useful, almost essential, for scuba diving.
And so, we booked onto a week-long diving trip out of Kinlochbervie, staying on land in the beautiful nearby village of Sheigra, a wild place close to my heart – it’s where I once met three orca while paddleboarding around Scotland a few years earlier.
What had I expected from this week? I must admit that I’m spoilt by the ease of overseas diving, and so perhaps like many, I was bracing myself for freezing cold, short dives in dark water with poor visibility.
How wrong I was!
OK, it wasn’t exactly warm in the water, but after a couple of dives reacquainting ourselves with our kit we sussed our systems. By combining decent layers on my extremities – a 5mm hood and gloves, and a J2 / Arctic baselayer team – I managed to stay warm for two 45-60 minute dives each day.
I have been fortunate enough to dive in Scotland many times before. Each time I do, it takes my breath away all over again. I think there’s something about the dark, cold water that makes the colourful, vibrant life underwater all the more surprising and delightful to encounter. The visibility was good, and the dive sites were excellent – we found ourselves descending into kelp forests, swimming through underwater arches and counting nudibranchs on safety stops. We didn’t need to be deep to understand how Scotland’s seas are so full of the mega-fauna that people associate it with. But to see the building blocks of that ecosystem was so special – the underwater forests, muds, and walls covered in life that build up the picture, sustain the fish, nourish the seals, attract the whales.
I took my dad’s underwater camera with me, and was really pleased with the shots I took! I’m by no means a professional, and so I hope you enjoy the photos accompanying this blog for nothing other than a sense of wonder at what’s living in the waters around Scotland, not far below the surface, but deep enough to be hidden from view. Being accompanied by a camera gave me a feeling of exploring anew.
Beautiful pink urchins, tiny white ornate nudibranchs, brittle stars clambering along the walls. Compass jellyfish suspended in the water column, feather stars dancing in the depths. Walls descending metre after metre absolutely covered in sea squirts, horseman anemones, and velvet swimming crabs scuttling in between hiding places. Eels, wrasse, gobis. Squat lobsters inviting you for a set-to, if you’re only bold enough to get close. Queenies defying physics to dart out of sight – a swimming clam. I’ve been fortunate to dive all over the world, and I think I squealed, gesticulated and excitedly pointed at more stuff underwater in my week diving with my mum in the North of Scotland than anywhere else I’ve been. Maybe it’s because I know she’ll share my utter delight at these intriguing, beautiful, unexpected life forms, maybe it’s because even after years of diving here, I’m still surprised every time I experience the underwater world again.
One thing is for sure – I’m not done exploring Scotland under scuba. I do a lot of snorkelling around my home in the Highlands: One of my greatest joys is introducing people who’ve never snorkelled before to what’s underwater in Scotland, which I do during the summer months with the charity I run, Seaful. But I’m going to make sure that I keep my own childlike excitement sparkling with regular trips to depths where the sea squirts grow to the size of my fist and the anemones sparkle under the light of my torch, and the lobsters are blue and fierce.
In fact, I’d better go and message my mum, and see if she fancies a diving trip up North again next year.
Some of the products Cal wore during her trip
Cal Major is a veterinary surgeon, ocean and nature advocate, and world-record adventurer, passionate about reconnecting people to the ocean, and protecting the wildlife and ecosystems within it.