The Aquanauts out west.
A thousand years of shipwrecks have happened at Scilly and a thousand recorded. A possible further thousand went unrecorded or the information was lost. A potential 2000 wrecks here and only about 200 have been found. That is a huge potential for any wreck hunter like me. I all but average one newly discovered wreck for each year I have dived here and found many interesting things besides. A few years back there was group called the Aquanauts who came over to Scilly to hunt for the wreck of HMS Romney. They hired my mates boat to conduct their survey. They had all the gear and a team of about 6 people. They searched vast areas of sea bed with a magnetometer and in all the areas they worked they only found one lonely anchor. This I found odd. I was working one of the same areas while they were here and diving the numerous anomalies. Most times I turned up with something. The areas they covered amounted to ten times as much as what I was working; they even went over things I knew to be there and did not seem to get any signals. This all made me wonder whether their equipment was working properly. I read their report and can see from their surveyed areas that they missed things they went over. Such a shame really as they should have found more than they did after the expense and time they put in.
When I knew the aquanauts were coming I raced out each day to dive the anomalies I had found before they came to make sure they didnt beat me to anything I had potentially already found. You cant claim it unless you've actually dived it! Those are the rules! I was still at it alone while they were here. They passed by me quite a few times. I spent a day on their boat with them on one occasion and was amazed at the lack of readings they had while out there. I go out with my old magnetometer and I nearly always find anomalies to look at. I have about 40 anchors. 5 shipping containers and 18 new shipwrecks found thus far. I know of odd cannons and other items of wreckage that I have already got marked on my gps. let alone all the previously known sites found by others. I have so many hits yet to look at- that when you zoom out on my GPS it goes black with all the hits. I have already dived countless of these to find everything thus far discovered. As I said, in a previous post, there are thousands of lost lobster pots out there and they actually give off a better signal than a gun or an anchor will. A bundle of them is big enough to make you thing its a biggish wreck down there. All of those readings have to be checked out- I have dived hundreds of lost pots yet the aquanauts never reported even one being found. That to me is impossible unless your mag can tell you- "nope -dont bother-thats another lost lobby pot!" Sorry but there is no such thing on the market. Any one of the hits I still have to look at could be something interesting but most will turn out to be pots. Dumped trawl cables are another blight to the wreck hunter. So for that team to turn up just one anchor after all their effort tells me something was going wrong with thier survey technique or equipment..
These things are everywhere down there!
The aquanauts are long gone now leaving me to find the islands wrecks alone once more. But I am getting older (nearly 60) and diving is getting harder. I just hope that in years to come, when someone new comes over to chance their arm that they do not take the aquanauts survey too seriously. Yes they covered a large area but I know they missed so much that it needs to be done again. If the next man bothesr to read anything I write then don't get discouraged by my time here either. I will never be able to dive all the hits I have- before I have got to stop going out there. I feel like I've done so much but in reality I have covered so little of Scilly. It seems a lot on the face of it but it is vast out there. Even the shallows still turn up new wrecks time to time let alone the deeper water- over 50m where I wont go no more. Most of whats been searched at Scilly has been out west and around the norrad rocks. I have done some of the other areas, and so have others before me, but very little has been looked at on the whole. Sadly the sport of diving and wreck and treasure hunting is dying a death. Killed off by draconian authorities rules and regulations. I fear that instead of more being found in future years, that little to nothing will be. Then all those idiot heritage bodies will find themselves out of work.
No comments:
Post a Comment