A new boat!

We have now bought another boat, it is not new, it is not big, it is very transportable though.

Once it has all the safety gear and meets the required of the government, it will be available for diving all around Cornwall.

A Weekend with Atlantic Scuba.

2013 - A Brief Review of the Year

2013, just what did it bring to Atlantic Scuba? We taught lots of people to dive and took loads of people diving on our boat, nothing much new there.

So, the highlights.

• We were asked to supply some Thornback Ray footage for Channel 4's Easter Special program, "Easter Eggs Live" - LINK
• We released 1,000 juvenile lobsters for the National Lobster Hatchery on the Old Wall Reef in Falmouth. We also released 1,200 baby lobsters around the Hera wreck - LINK
• We re-found and corrected the GPS co-ordinates of the Andromeda and Bay of Panama wrecks, we also corrected the co-ordinates of the Ponus with the UK Hydrgraphic Office.
• We helped Wessex Archaeology with a project to identify one of our local submarine wrecks. The project is to be released to the public during 2014.
• We found remains of up to seven different wrecks, previously un-found, throughout the year.
• We were interviewed by several students from Tremough University, for various project.
• ITV took some of our lobster release footage from You-Tube, WITHOUT our permission, and used it on a news item - LINK
• Monty Halls chartered our boat for one of his 'Great Escapes' weekends. Both Monty and his 'escapees' were very happy with the diving, we look forward to his return.
• Some of our underwater photo's appeared in SCUBA Magazine over the year, mainly in Nick Lyon's Scuba Bloke article. 
• The Guardian newspaper booked our boat to take out some freedivers from FreediveUK (Newquay) - LINK
• We were asked if our boat 'Stingray' could be used as the safety boat for a German film, 'Evita's Revenge'. It ended up being used for some of the filming, the film is due to be shown in Germany Spring 2014.
• We were contacted by TwoFour film company, we were asked to take part in a TV program, which we did. The series, including our episode, starts on Channel 5 early 2014.
• Another group of Tremough students made a short documentary film about us, it is being entered into several film festivals, it will not be available to the public until it has been show at all the festivals.

So, quite an eventful year. I wonder what 2014 will bring?

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.