Travel

A small-spotted catshark hanging out with a fireworks anemone during a night dive in Loch Fyne
 

Scotland offers an almost endless range of diving and underwater photography opportunities. Well-known areas like Saint Abbs and Eyemouth, the Moray Firth, Scapa Flow, the Outer Hebrides, the west coast sea lochs, and the Firth of Clyde are staples of the diving community. Rather than cover them all, I’ll focus on the west coast sea lochs, where I dive most often.

Sea lochs can stretch miles inland and are often surrounded by mountains, but they remain marine and strongly tidal. With over 200 to explore, I’ve only dived around 20! Their geography shelters them from all but the worst weather, making them a reliable option when the open coast isn’t diveable. Each sea loch has a range of habitats offering great variety even within a single site—tidal narrows, soft mud, rocky reefs, walls, kelp forests, seagrass meadows, and maerl beds. Most dives are shore-based, though boats open up less accessible areas.

One favorite is Manse Point in Loch Leven. From a single entry, you can explore silt slopes, brittlestar reefs, soft coral areas, and rocky reefs, providing photographic opportunities for everything from close-focus wide angle to supermacro. In Loch Creran, the narrows under the Creagan Bridge are shallow but full of life. Soft corals cover large areas, and in spring, nudibranchs are abundant, providing a bounty of macro subjects.

At the entrance to Loch Etive lies the Falls of Lora, possibly my favorite shore dive in Scotland. With a 19-mile loch funneling through a 500-foot-wide gap, currents can reach 12 knots. This dive should only be attempted at slack water to avoid a vicious and quick trip out into the open ocean or deep into the loch. The dramatic topography is covered in anemones, sponges, hydroids, and bryozoans, and spurdog sharks may appear in summer.

Loch Fyne, the longest sea loch at 40 miles and over 650 feet deep, has many excellent sites. Favorites in the upper loch include Inveraray Slip, Drishaig, and St Catherines (Seal Reef). Inveraray is known for fireworks anemones and Norway lobsters in the mud. These sites are also ideal for night dives, when small cuttlefish often appear in late summer and autumn.

While largely overlooked as a dive destination, Scotland deserves to be on many a diver’s bucket list. It features world-class cold-water diving in general and the western lochs are but one region worth exploring.
 

A beautiful nudibranch, Carronella pellucida, munches on some hydroids, Loch Creran
 

A stunning crinoid shrimp well-camouflaged on its host, Loch Creran
 

A beautiful cluster of Dahlia anemones, Loch Etive
 

A spectacularly colored bobtail squid perched on a mud flat, Loch Fyne
 

A fireworks anemone fluoresces strongly under ultraviolet light, Loch Fyne
 

Anemones, tunicates, urchins and snail eggs share space on a lone boulder, Loch Leven
 

Brittle stars seem to scramble over each other to reach closer to the surface, Loch Leven
 

A common sunstar hunting down urchins, Loch Leven
 

A beautiful and uncommonly seen curled octopus, Loch Leven
 

A scallop and a sea pen just like hanging out together, Loch Leven
 

A sea cucumber stuffs its face with microscopic food bits, Loch Leven
 

A spurdog shark rests on a gravelly bottom, Loch Etive
 

A gorgeous juvenile anemone perched on a blade of seagrass, Loch Leven
 

Dahlia anemones paint the side of a rock outcrop, Loch Etive
 

A squat lobster fluoresces spectacularly, Loch Fyne
 

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