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,