Association Anchor.

Today I am going to show you how ridiculous the rules are that we divers operate under today as opposed to yesteryear. In 1967 the Royal Navy lifted a giant anchor from near the Gilstone rock, out among the western rocks here at Scilly. They believed the anchor to be from the wreck of Association, which sank in 1707, and they lifted it from that historic wreck without any government interference whatsoever.  They brought the anchor back to St Marys for public display but the local council refused to take it. (How short sighted of them!) The Navy then had no option but to drop the anchor back on the sea bed and they did this about 400 yards south east of Nut Rock in St Marys Roadstead, at the far side of the anchorage, in 9meters of water.  46 years later we find the anchor in the sand where they had left it and to get it up we had to jump through many hoops. First we had to pay the MMO for a licence to lift it and all the paperwork that that entailed.  We then had to consult with Natural England to show that we were not going to disturb any wildlife and provide images of the sea bed to show that this was the case and state that we were lifting the anchor directly up. We then had to consult with Historic England to make sure we were not removing it from an archaeological site. We also had to consult with the Receiver of wreck too and with our local council.  All we were hoping for was to try and achieve what the navy failed to do all those years before. We divers gave our time freely and so did the guy who owned the salvage vessel. The council provided local actin group funding from the lift to final display on the local green on St Marys. Already you can see the vast difference from the navy's time and what we had to do today.  The lift went well and we got the anchor to a local beach at high tide. Once there we dropped the anchor to the sand and disconnected it from the salvage vessel. Later- when the tide had gone out a lorry could come onto the beach and retrieve the then fully exposed anchor and remove it from the beach to wherever we wanted it to go on the island.   

Salvage vessel lifting the anchor vertically up towards the surface.

 Now the silliest thing about all this paperwork we have today- is that no one took into account that this salvage was being done in an- "Anchorage" and we were lifting an 'anchor' from within that 'anchorage'. So after we had gone the next thig to come into that same anchorage would be a cruise ship. And yes, you guessed it, the cruise ship comes in to anchor for a few days. This doesn't happen once a year here it happens many many times per year in the summer season here. Sometimes as many as 3 cruise ships will come in here to anchor at once-and all will drop at least one huge anchor each-sometimes two anchors are deployed. As the ship swivels around on the tide those anchors rip up the sea bed. Our anchor, which we had to jump through hoops to lift -came vertically up. It did not drag or move along at all-no-it was winched vertically up to the salvage vessel. When the cruise ships up anchor they first reel in the long chains to pull their anchors in. The chain is seldom straight but straightens as the winch takes up the slack. The anchor then drags along the sea bed indiscriminately destroying everything in its path and cuts huge deep swaths in the sea bed. I know, because I see the damage they do everytime I dive in the anchorage; and this is often as the cruise ships anchors expose all sorts of items that were buried before they came to anchor and we dive on the damage and pick up anything that has been uncovered. This is usually Victoriana- rubbish like old bottles etc. Whereas our anchor caused no damage whatsoever -in fact- we removed a very large and rusty contaminant from within the natural environment to put it on public display. We were trying to provide a good service. So why the hell are we charged a fee and made to do all the stupid paperwork if after we are gone a cruise ship can come along and just do what they like?. This is the utter madness we divers have to put up with in todays mad world. Its the same with putting a shot line down on a wreck. We as divers have rules to adhere to today so that we dont damage anything and dont leave any ropes or gear in the sea. Yet fishermen can tow a trawl right through an historic wrecksite. Further to this- tens of thousands of tonnes of fishing gear -ropes ,nets,trawls and cables, are lost by fishermen every year but the powers that be are more bothered with a boat load of divers and one shot line put down on a wreck, which very rarely gets left behind or lost, than they are with all those tonnes of lost fishing gear.... a lot of which goes on killing wildlife in one way or another all the time its down there.  All this is about:- is getting money from out of our pockets.