Simon Campbell

St Kilda Guide: Chapter one

Words cannot do justice to the incredible ‘above water’ scenery and sub-aquatic topography of St Kilda. I first visited the archipelago in May of 2005; an experience I will never forget. This expedition shared my passion for the area, immersing 24 Divers, from a selection of BSAC clubs, qualifications and experience in two weeks days adventurous, challenging and world class diving.

In the chapters (see right hand side of this page) I will detail the ups and downs of the expedition, but first a little bit about the place itself…

St Kilda

St Kilda is an archipelago consisting of four main islands, Hirta, Dùn, Soay and Boreray and a number of sea stacs notably Levenish, Stac Lee and Stac an Armin. The islands and stacs we now see were once the rim of a volcano which first erupted 50 to 60 million years ago. They lie in the Atlantic Ocean around 35 nm from North Uist in the Outer Hebrides and around 100 nm west from the mainland of the Scotland.

Hirta, the main island of the St Kilda group, is located at 57 49’N 008 35’W. At just over 400m, the sheer rock face of Conachair on Hirta forms the highest sea cliff in the British Isles.

Although the air temperature is stable, featuring mild winters and cool summers with daily temperature range of 6C in summer and 3C in winter, St Kilda is probably the windiest place in Britain and experiences 75 days of gales per year. This is problematic to divers and is the reason why some of the archipelago still remains unsurveyed and uncharted. A team from the British Geological Survey did much work. All these reference documents will be available for consultation during the expedition.

The wildlife and plant life are very special on the islands as they were not affected by the last ice age. As a consequence there are unique species of both flora and fauna to be found.

The islands were visited by humans 3500 years ago and were continuously inhabited for 2000 years prior to the wholesale evacuation of the islands in 1930. The island is now uninhabited, save a number of civilians contracted to the Ministry of Defence to service the radar station; seasonal volunteer workers and a National Trust ranger who needs to be contacted before any landing on the island can take place.

St Kilda is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland and has been designated a world heritage site; the nature reserve is managed by Scottish Natural Heritage.
There is a pub known as the ‘Puff Inn’ within the confines of the former military base at Village Bay.

The diving

St Kilda is a challenging location, each dive being an adventure in itself.

Sheer rock faces which slice into the Atlantic are a feature throughout the archipelago providing world class wall dives. Sheer cuts into the rock extending below the surface also provide spectacular cavern diving.

The underwater topography and architecture is what you are going to see in St Kilda. As in all British diving and even avoiding the early season plankton bloom, visibility cannot guaranteed. It can be breathtaking: horizontally somewhere between 30-50m! Water depths outside the eight mile diameter bank where the archipelago sits drop off to around 150m. Within the area of the islands and stacs depth of around 60-70m are found; locations directly adjacent to these being 40-50m.

Every inch of the underwater environment is encrusted with all types of marine life. Due to the awesome visibility, the profusion of life extends to below 50m. Being so far offshore, there are pelagic fish in the area, but by their nature are not often seen by divers. There are not many benthic fish to be seen, but plenty of grey seals; probably the reason for the former!! It’s a sub-aqua photographer’s paradise.

OK, enough of the build up and without further adoo, go an raid the biscuit tin then start reading chapter two (see the top right hand side of the page). I hope you enjoy!

3 comments

1. James N Rae on 14/02/09 at 2240 hours

   Just read the story on St Kilda, and its history quite a sad tale actually maybe ill take the pipes and play a tune there one day. P.S Im now available as hire as a piper £100/hour (of playing),

2. Al Gray on 10/03/09 at 1838 hours

   I led the very first ever island based (Joint Services) expedition to St. Kilda in 1978.  The purpose of our expedition was to up-date the wreck information for the Admiralty charts in existence at that time, which gave the outline of the islands, with soundings on a tracking into Village Bay, and another one leaving it. In other words, until our expedition, there wasn’t any wreck information.

   We found the canon and wrecks which I am sure everyone is very familiar with now.  We had two large inflatable boats, one of which was equipped with a “Seascribe” Echo-sounder, which sometimes worked and mostly didn’t.  Our first dive was under the cliffs of Conachair (when the “Seascribe” decided not to work), and I remember stopping the boats some 20m from the cliffs in the huge swell, tossing 50m of shot-line/anchor over. the side to give us a clue regarding depth - and not being able to find bottom.

   The National Trust (for Scotland) wanted to conduct a Gannet count on Stac Lee , for the first time since the 1930s.  Being a bit mental in those days, and being also a responsible young officer,  I put them ashore by driving in on a 12m swell, temporarily beaching the boat at a 40 degree angle, on the rocks wheile the sea receded, they jumped off , then the next swell picked me and the the inflatable up and washed us back into the sea.  The retrieval of the scientists didn’t go quite so smoothly unfortunately, and resulted in one of them sustaining a shattered femur and the other a broken collar-bone (me and the inflatable were O.K).

   On another day I decided we should explore the channel between Hirta and Soay.  All went well until we hit huge pyramidal waves, reflecting back off each of the islands.  The two inflatables got separated and it was suddenly every boat for itself.  I got swept into a large whirlpool and suddenly things looked everso bad, descending in a circular swirly-whirly course to the ‘plug-hole’ of the Atlantic.  My wife Susie, our Medical Officer, and normally the coolest person I know under pressureunder pressure, actually screamed!  I almost followed-through!  Judicious switching of the tiller to accelerate against the flow of the whirlpool meant that centrifugal force threw us out and we went back round the north side of Hirta to explore more sheltered sites.

   We had a great 3 1/2 weeks stay there,  I was a full-time Public Relations Officer for the Forces at the time and had the luxury of having my own professional photographer, who came with us.  We therefore have a superb photographic record of all our exploits, which we regularly hark back to.  Hope you all enjoy the place as much as we did.

3. Simon Campbell on 28/04/09 at 2217 hours

   Wow Al. I didn’t know that… Lets talk in detail next time we meet.

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“St Kilda Guide”

Chapters

• Chapter one
• The essential guide
• Overview
• Introduction
• Introduction
• Chapter two
• Chapter three
• Chapter four
• Chapter five
• Chapter six

Triton Oceanic Sub Aqua Club undertook their second expedition to the Scottish islands to explore the remote beauty of the islands underwater world to the full, pioneering previously identified virgin dive sites and visiting some of the old favourites.

This expedition will form the basis of the ‘Essential Guide to St Kilda’, a brand new publication featuring the ‘top 20’ sites across the islands.