Saturday July 26th was a glorious sunny day which prompted 45 people to come fossil huinting at Pirate's Cove. Despite a highish tide everyone found enough fossils to keep them happy. One young lad in particular did very well and made some of the adults green with envy.

Wednesday should have been our main event for the Weymouth and Portland Spirit of the Sea festival. The plan was to dive on the Phoenix caissons in Portland Harbout with an underwater camera and a diver with a full face mask to provide a running commentary. The sound and pictures would then be sent to the Chesil Beach Centre for viewing.

The day before the event the weather forecast was bad so it was decided to abandon the Portland Harbour event and substitute a reduced event in the Fleet where the water is more sheltered. Overnight there was an inch of rain and on the morning the wind was a 6 gusting 7. Despite this three of us ventured up to the Black Hut carrying all the necessary equipment and attempted to jury rig a system to provide pictures from the Fleet. Difficulties meant we missed the 11 and 12am planned broadcasts, but as there were no watchers due to the weather this was OK. By the 2pm slot all was in place and despite deteriorating weather a broadcast was made to a small audience at the Centre. By 3pm the rain was harder and the wind stronger, but an improved broadcast was made to a slightly larger audience.

We then broke down the system and conveyed the essential parts back to the Centre in appalling conditions.

This exercise, although carried out in dreadful conditions, provided a number of useful pointers to improvements that can be made to ensure the smooth running should a similar event be held in the future.

After a break of several weeks due to other commitments I managed to get up to clean the underwater camera. A bright sunny day, but a very cool southerly wind. Water temperature was 18.0C. Visibility was moderate to good. At last the algae has stopped growing and and cleaning has become less of a chore. Over the next month or so most of the algae will die off and with reduced plankton in the water the visibility should improve. A few wrasse about, both ballen and corkwing, but only one grey mullet seen. The common gobies are about in moderate quantities, but very few Palaemon elegans prawns about yet.

Walking back along the beach, the thyme is now well out in flower while the samphire and sea purslane is just starting to flower. The solitary yellow-horned poppy has now pretty much finished flowering.