Juvenile Lobster Release - 30/11/2013

On Saturday November 30th, we took out nine divers and 1,200 lobsters, on our RHIB Stingray, to the Hera wreck.

During the week, we had received a phone call from the National Lobster Hatchery, asking if we were diving at the weekend. We had already arranged to dive the Hera followed by the Stanwood wreck on the Saturday, and, we already had a few booked on the boat. After describing the sea bed substrate around the Hera to Ben at the Hatchery, he said it sounded ideal. The sea bed around the Hera is a mixture of Maerl (dead and alive), coarse sand and shells, giving the juvenile lobsters plenty of places to bury and hide. Most of the divers were locals and some had even previously released the baby lobsters on our boat before. Two divers had come down from Portsmouth and loved the idea of helping with the release. Eight divers each took down one tray, containing roughly one hundred and fifty 25mm long lobsters. Several had cameras, one diver just took their camera to film some of the releases.

After the dive, there was a nice buzz on the boat. Everyone was happy with what they had done and the fact they had a nice dive. With over 10m visibility underwater, it made it a great dive. The sun shone on us all day, even if the wind was a little chilly.
This was our third release and our largest so far. Previously we have released 300 lobsters on the Manacles and 1,000 on the Old Wall Reef.

Facebook Comments

I do love some of the comments we get on Facebook, some are saying what a good time they've had and some are just quite random. Here's a few of the more recent ones -

• Atlantic Scuba, Cornwall's premier sub-aquatic ballistic projectile discovery solutions facilitators.
• A nice day's diving at Fraggle Rock with the media whores who are Atlantic Atlantic Scuba.
• An enjoyable training session today with Atlantic Scuba at Swanpool beach which was only slightly spoiled by lots of bikini clad wimmins spoiling the view of the beach.
• The official Atlantic Scuba wreck hunting song... PASTIES
• Big thanks for the dive today,really enjoyed my self and absolutely over the moon with the swag I managed to bring back .. Will be recommending yours selfs to other club members who manage to get down this end of the country. And I plan on sorting out a club trip with yours selfs
  Ones again thanks  
• what an awesome dive with Paul Freeman and Atlantic Scuba, cannon balls galore, scallops and two very interesting finds
• Great little bumble with Atlantic Scuba today. Thanks mark and nick for letting me tag along.  
• Had a lovely day at Swanpool beach with Nick and Atlantic Scuba. While Mark and Nick took someone in for a dive, I enjoyed a latte with the ladies. Tomorrow, I am on the boat 'helping' (drinking tea and looking for seals) Mark while the divers are down. I could get used to this

 Just thought I'd share some of them , I especially like "Cornwall's premier sub-aquatic ballistic projectile discovery solutions facilitators", I can see a T-shirt there. 

Falmouth's U-Boats

At the end of the Great War, the Keisers's high seas fleet was interned at Scapa Flow, Orkney. Due to some mis-communication or lack of communication, Rear Admiral von Reuter ordered the scuttling of the entire fleet. Most were removed straight away except the deep ones. The German U-Boats in UK waters went to Harwich to surrender, with various fates over the next few years. We are still looking into the exact reason why any were sent to Falmouth, there are misleading reports about the actual number sent, from 5 to 9. What we do know is that there are the remains of 4 left in the area. One supposedly broke it's tow near Dodman point and was sunk, a bit of target practice. Apparently it was easier to sink it than try and restart the tow. There is a U-Boat there near Dodman Point, UB113, which was on patrol when lost according to official records. The remaining U-Boats ended up moored in Falmouth Bay, awaiting whatever their fate would be. A south easterly wind arrived and the U-Boats came adrift from their moorings.

The photo above shows 4 U-Boats on the rocks at Pendennis headland, Uboat.net has UB86, UB97, UB106, UB112, UB128 and UC92 as the 6 reported to have been sent down to Falmouth.

What we can say for sure is that UB86 is pictured above, you can read it on the side of the conning tower. Remains of these 2 U-Boats still exist, as does another on Castle Beach. The Castle Beach U-Boat is thought to be UB128, the one behind UB86 in the photo above is thought to be UB97. The only problem with the Castle Beach U-Boat is that it should be visible in the top photo, it isn't. Did it sink deeper and dragged ashore for scrapping? Maybe, one day, the truth will be known.

So if six arrived and we have four on Pendennis, one on Castle Beach, what happened to the other one? Was it re-floated and scrapped? There is no information available on it that we can find, so far.

Over the years the Falmouth U-Boats have had a hard time. They were gradually broken up as these pics show.

Whatever was left was then flattened by George Renton in 1966/7. Contracted by the Navy, probably sub contracted by the Harbour Master, George did a fine job of flattening the remains. All that is left visible above water now is at low spring tide, part of UB86 stands maybe 2' and can be seen below.

On Castle Beach, the U-Boat stands proud about 1' at low spring tide, centre in the photo below.

Today, all 3 U-Boats are well worth diving and are easily accessed from the shore, whatever the other 2 may be.

UPDATE:
After Wessex Archaeology spent two days in June investigating the Castle Beach site, taking photos etc., we were asked to go and take a couple of extra measurements. There are six circular features near the shore end of the sub, measuring 1m in diameter and 9m from front of the first to the rear of the last. This was the last piece of data required to determine that it is in fact UC92. The six circular features are the mine shafts, as UC's are a mine layers, UC92 was the only mine layer of the six. Records state it was lifted in 1971 and scrapped, it looks like it wasn't lifted, just dragged up onto Castle Beach to be scrapped. The stern lies at 50.147027, -5.055695, the bow at 50.147299, -5.055984, it is visible on Bing maps or Google maps.

UC92 at the end of the war.

Atlantic Scuba Explorers BSAC 2510

With a lot of help from some friends, we now have our own club. It is a BSAC special branch associated with the business of Atlantic Scuba.

The club hope to be able to offer lots of in branch training, using Atlantic Scuba's Dive Centre as the base. The club has no assetts. So, no compressor, boat or dive equipment but Atlantic Scuba does. Atlantic Scuba will offer club members special rates on boat dives, equipment hire and air fills.

I doubt the club will ever be the biggest but it will be active and hopefully help BSAC members along with their training.

Exploration week

We had a chance for a week of some shallow exploration dives. There were several projects we wanted to do, so we took the opportunity. Our first target was some cast iron blocks we had previosuly found. We looked around the iron block site, we couldn't find any other evidence of a wreck but there was no way these were dropped by accident. Most likely keel blocks from a small fishing boat, with a keel approxiamtely 6m long. There is a lot of water movement in the area, so any other items may have been washed out to sea.

The next target was a small cave, we entered the cave and swam to where we thought there was an exit in the cave roof. We then realised that the cave continued further on, we progressed. It went very dark then a green blurry window appeared, we headed towards the window and realised it was a small exit, ninety degrees to the cave. In all, the cave is about 30-40m long. Depths range from 10-2m depending on tide and where you are in the cave. A cracking little easy swimthrough.

The next location was a site we have been exploring for various reasons. This time we were looking for some granite cargo/ballast, from a wreck we had believed to be in the area from our research with English Heritage. We did two dives and found some wreckage, it was of the wrong age, it gives us another wreck to ID.

Then we headed to Killigerran Head to look for the Andromeda. This site has been dived in the past but all the GPS marks were wrong. We searched the area and found a rocky outcrop that would look like a wreck on a sounder, we have some excellent visibility but never found the wreck. We were told by an ex-dive boat operator that it was close to Porthmellin Head, hidden in a gully, 250m away from Killigerran Head. As we approached, the water got very shallow. It then dropped off again. Hunting around with the sounder we found a safe way in, which turned out to be where the bow of the Andromeda was, identified by the hawse pipes.
So, during seven days, we had found a swimthrough cave, two new wrecks and one old lost wreck.

We also managed to complete an Open Water course and an Advanced Open Water Course. As well as a couple of commercial dives in the middle.

Wreck Hunting

Over the years we have been working hard to find lost ship wrecks. Most have been found, especially around Falmouth Bay. After a lot of work and some luck, we found our first lost wreck. Once we had found the wreck, we had to identify it. There was little left, apart from the cargo. After a lot of help from English Heritage we had two possible names, A or B. The main difference was the type of cargo, this narrowed it down to just one possibility, wreck A. It was definitely granite cargo and not ballast.

This left us with another wreck to find, wreck B. After some searching, we thought we had found it, due to finding granite stone ballast on a different site. After more research we realised that this new site wasn't wreck B as we thought it was, it did point us in the direction of wreck B. So now we have a wreck C to identify and wreck B to find. From our research, wreck B's cargo was stone ballast, as was wreck C. The location of wreck B was found on a coroners report, close to shore, nowhere near wreck C. The report was very descriptive and made the site obvious, we even had the direction the ship was heading when it came ashore.

At this moment in time, we are waiting to correctly identify wreck C's cargo and wreck B's exact location. Just waiting for the right weather.

On an attempt to have a look for wreck B, the weather stopped us, so we decided on diving an area as close to the site as possible. During this dive we found some Pig Iron blocks, possibly keel weights from a fishing vessel. We now need to re-visit this area to see if there is any more of it left. So now a wreck D to investigate!

During our physical searches we use a Starfish Side Scan sonar, Lowrance HDS10 with LSS and an MX500 magnetometer. Records searching is a bit labourious, using English Heritage certainly takes a chunk of that away from us. They do like feedback and any information we uncover in return,

Easter eggs live

We've supplied footage to windfallfilms, they are making Channel 4's Easter special "Easter Eggs Live". Gonna have to watch it now to see if it's shown.

Watch for Thornback Rays around Falmouth Bay.

2013 Shipwreck Conference

The 31st International Shipwreck Conference was held today @ Plymouth in the U.K.

Speakers included :

• Jon Parlour - Catharina von Flensburg
• Steve Clarkson - HMS Venerable
• Fred Hocker - VASA: Old Myths and new research
• Steve Mortimer & Rick Ayrton - HMS Stockforce
• Peter Day - Royal Charter
• Ray Ives -  His Life Diving
• Guido Gay - Italian battleship Roma
• Nick Hall - Replication and testing of Tudor naval guns

 Once again the talks were all fascinating and very varied. Guido Gay's deep exploration with his very specialist equipment, made by him and his company. I think everyone in the room wanted the equipment that he had on his boat. HMS Stockforce was a Q-ship, a specially converted merchant vessel with hidden weapons.
A lot of the talks wasn't about the diving but more of the ships histories, fascinating in itself.
Thanks to everyone who gave the talks and the organisers, a interesting day.