On a scuba diving trip to the Outer Farne Islands, Richard’s intention was to dive on the shipwreck Chris Christiansen, sunk on the 16th February 1915.

After arrival on the site, the sea conditions were not good. It was decided to cancel the dive. The skipper turned his boat around and headed back towards the Inner Farnes, he was determined to salvage something from his so far wasted trip. 

After finding a likely spot in a sheltered bay, Richard and his dive buddy Phil kitted up. After doing the required safety checks on each others diving gear they both gave the Ok signal. They then positioned themselves on the side of the boat and dropped backwards into the sea.

They descended the 10 meters down to the seabed and spotted a gap in the kelp. They passed through the gap and were then swimming through a narrow undersea crevasse. Richard felt a tug on his foot, but the crevasse was too narrow to turn and look. At this point his dive partner Phil was totally unaware of what was going on as he was in front. They both carried on a bit further, they could see the opening of the crevasse now. Another tug on Richard’s foot, he was feeling very nervous now. Visions of the 1970’s film Jaws started to come to mind, but logical reasoning told him that it was too cold for man-eating sharks, it was February after all and the water was a chilly 5°C.

As they cleared the exit of the crevasse, Richard was determined to face whatever has scared him. He turned around to have a look, and there was nothing there. Now he was feeling confused, did he imagine it? He turned to look at my buddy, and he could see that he was laughing inside his diving gear. He pointed behind Richard, another look – still nothing there. Richard was feeling both anxious and frustrated now. 

After a couple of long minutes, Richard turned again and came face to face with a 6 foot Grey Seal, it almost jumped as far as he did. As he jumped it opened its mouth and clamped its jaws around his left thigh. It instantly let go and swam off like a torpedo – never to be seen again. 

Richard then started to get a very cold left leg. When the seal bit, it had punctured his brand new £500 dry-suit. Freezing cold winter water was now filling the area around his leg through the two neat round holes that had appeared. It was at that point that he decided it was time to finish the dive. He signalled to Phil that there was a problem and that he needed to return to the surface immediately. Phil nodded and they started preparing for their ascent. Phil deployed his surface marker buoy, this would signal the skipper that the divers were returning. He could then bring the boat in to meet the surfacing divers.

Exiting the water had its own problem, Richard’s dry-suit was so full of water it was impossible to climb the ladder back onto the boat. Richard held the ladder whilst Phil exited the water. It took both the full efforts of Phil and the skipper to pull Richard from the water. The three of them ending up laying on the floor of the boat soaking wet. Richard removed all of his diving gear except his suit. The skipper helped Richard unzip his suit, again the skipper got soaking wet as water burst out of the zip area. 

After returning to dry land and laughing off the incident, Richard removed his thermal under-suit to find his entire upper leg was one entire purple bruise. Fortunately there were no other injuries other than his pride. 

His diving suit took a couple of hours to repair, the bruise took three and a half weeks and the constant reminder of the incident by Phil still goes on to this day.

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Another comment, sorry. Horsforth, eh? I used to live in the student halls on Meanwood Road, know it? I finished uni in '96. I'll be off to Leeds again in Feb to see a friend. Boring news I know. And I can't remember my stupid blog password to post a comment on here. Poo.