I enjoyed compiling my Top 10 Dives list in 2022, and with another diverse set of dives completed in 2023 I wanted to repeat the process. Diving in 2023 mainly took place around the Isle of Man, and I also had the chance to dive overseas in Lanzarote, Montserrat, and Gibraltar. Some excellent and very different dives…
10. The Puddle – Calf of Man, Isle of Man (6/8/23): Dive with Isle of Man Sub Aqua Club, in the sheltered bay at south of the Calf. Notable for a wonderful interaction I had with an Atlantic Grey Seal for the majority of the dive, along with another curious seal on the surface that showed much interest in our delayed surface marker buoys (DSMB)! Always very impressive to be able to interact so closely to such large wild animals in their natural environment.
9. Camps Bay – Gibraltar (1/12/23): I joined Dive Charters for a couple of shore dives on the wrecks that were sunk as an artificial reef at Camps Bay on the south-west of the UK Overseas Territory. Great viz, lots of fish, nudibranchs and octopi, and several interesting wrecks. I was impressed at the marine life, including fan corals, octopuses and nudibranchs, and it was interesting to see the large amount of the non-native algae Rugulopteryx okamurae present. Good to buddy with Vivienne, one of the MSc Marine student group that I’d done a conservation talk for earlier in the week, and who demonstrated a good eye for spotting nudibranchs!
8. Fort Island Gully – Isle of Man (16-11-23): One of my scuba diving celebrity heroes Monty Halls visited the Isle of Man for the first time to present the IOM Awards of Excellence, and through my role on the Board of ‘Visit IOM’, I invited Monty to join me and others from IOM Sub Aqua Club for a dive in the seagrass in Fort Island Gully. Monty literally came straight from the airport to dive with us, we equipped him with my semi-dry suit and kit from a few of the Club members, and he enthusiastically jumped in and did an interview with me to camera, with the talented Mike Wilson who filmed the dive. Delighted I had the chance to Buddy with Monty for a dive – hopefully he’ll return to the IOM, and we’ll go deeper than 6m next time!
7. The SS Liverpool – Isle of Man (11/6/23): I joined Discover Diving for a trip to the wreck of the steel steamship Liverpool. This ship had set sail from Liverpool during the First World War in December 1916 and was sunk by a German mine laid by submarine U-80. She now lies approximately 4 nautical miles southeast of Langness peninsula, in c.40m depth. I had dived it once before, but today the viz was excellent and we had a great view of the big, beautiful stern of the ship!
6. The Paddle Wheel – Isle of Man (30-4-23): The IOM Sub Aqua Club went out of Douglas to dive the Paddle Wheel, which had come away from the vessel ‘Mona’s Queen’ when the shaft snapped on 14th June 1889. The wheel now lies flat on the seabed in just over 30m depth, four miles out from Douglas, and is a magnet for many fish. A wonderful dive on any occasion (which I’ve done three times now), however, the viz this time was the best I’d seen, and the fish life was fantastic.
5. Douglas Bay (north), drift dive to Groudle Glen – Isle of Man (14-8-23): Another IOM Sub Aqua Club trip out of Douglas. We dived two waves of divers, each dropping at the north end of the Bay and drifting further north to Groudle Glen. There was a good speed of drift, allowing us to cover a large area of the seabed through the dive, which was notable for the huge beds of brittle stars, with other life dotted amongst them. Great viz and a really enjoyable dive ‘flying’ over super abundant life on the seabed.
4. Museo Atlantico, Lanzarote, Canary Islands (9-2-23): I did a few dives with Native Diving while on holiday on Lanzarote, which, like the Isle of Man, is a UNESCO Biosphere. The general diving around the island was excellent, but the dive I’d really wanted to do was the underwater museum, Museo Atlantico, close to Playa Blanca in the island’s south. It is the only European underwater museum and has been open to the public since 2016. The Museo Atlantico consists of several impressive sculptures at a depth of 12-14 meters, by the artist Jason deCaires Taylor. He has created two other underwater sculpture parks, including the world’s first in in Grenada, Caribbean, which I’d dived some years ago. The sculptures are very diverse and although, it’s not a dive I’d do again, it certainly made for a very different and interesting dive.
3. Jurby Targets, Isle of Man (10-9-23): This was a dive I’d been very keen to do since I’d arrived on the Isle of Man and heard about the Royal Air Force (RAF) practice bombing range in the sea off Jurby Head, close to RAF Jurby airfield, in the northwest of the Island. I’d had one dive in the far south of the area in 2020 with Discover Diving, however, on this previous dive I’d only managed to locate two pieces of ordinance. I’d subsequently spoken to others who had dived the site, and they described the seabed “being littered with (mainly dummy) bombs and amazing benthic sea life, due to the area not being dredged by scallop boats” (the risk of hitting a live bomb!) Armed with my research, (including old RAF charts), I planned the dive for the IOM Sub Aqua Club. On 10-9-23 the tides and weather aligned, and we towed our Club RIB from Douglas, launched it from Peel, and headed up the coast to Jurby. We dropped a shot line on the chosen mark and immediately after descending to the bottom came across several small, blue dummy bombs, and some far larger ones that may have been live. We located further ordinance throughout our slow drift and recorded the in and out GPS marks so we can easily return. The seabed was in great condition for sea life and had clearly not been trawled for some time (ever?) The Jurby bombing range is an important piece of RAF and IOM history, and it was very interesting to see a small selection of the bombs dropped by pilots who were honing their skills before heading into combat.
2. Rendezvous & Little Bays, Montserrat (27-5-23): In May I visited the UK Overseas Territory of Montserrat for three weeks to carry out capacity building for the Montserrat National Trust, and while there, spent my Sundays diving on coral reef conservation projects with Scuba Montserrat. I visited the artificial reef and saw the excellent work they are doing to combat Stony Coral Tissue Disease, and then on my last weekend I was invited to assist with the translocation of hard corals from Rendezvous Bay to Little Bay.
Since the volcano erupted in the late 1990s Montserrat has lost its main port in Plymouth (which was buried by the volcano). Work is now underway to expand the island’s port facilities in Rendezvous Bay, which will include the construction of a new jetty. Scuba Montserrat had been contracted by the Government to save as many as possible of the important hard corals from the site of the jetty construction, by translocating them into the next-door Little Bay.
Four of us dived, and armed with masonry chisels, lump hammers, and large plastic baskets, we dropped on the shallow reef and proceeded to locate and then detach the hard corals. It looked quite crude and brutal, but I’d been assured that the method works, and care was taken that there was a buffer zone around all the living tissue. The corals were then taken a short distance by boat to the next-door bay, where we then placed the corals onto a ‘holding table’ prior to them being placed permanently in the reef. I did some filming of the coral translocation and it’s available on YouTube here. Fascinating and enjoyable to be involved first hand in this underwater coral conservation work.
1. HMS Racehorse, Isle of Man (18-7-23): This historic Isle of Man shipwreck, which is regarded as a key motivation behind Sir William Hillary founding the RNLI, has definitely got under my skin! The wreck is owned by the IOM Sub Aqua Club and in April 2022, accompanied by Dr Jon Chamberlain from Essex University, we relocated the wreck site and Jon filmed to create photogrammetry of the site’s main gully. This footage was used in the Racehorse 200-year commemorative exhibition later that year. A short summary of the recent Racehorse dives and commemorations are in my previous blog post here. This historic wreck has also clearly gotten under Jon’s skin also as he returned to the IOM in December 2022 for the commemorations and then again in July 2023 with his colleague Dr Louis Clift from the Essex University Marine Technology Research Unit to dive the site again with the IOM Sub Aqua Club, this time bringing Underwater Information Systems (UWIS) equipment. Jon and Louis deployed three UWIS buoys in a triangle above the wreck site and then we dived on the site, with Jon using an iPad in an underwater case that communicated with the three buoys and with Louis on another iPad on the surface. This allowed us to see in real time our exact position and to message the surface and add waypoints on our map. Very cool! The dive became my favourite of the year, as thanks to the iPad location map we were then able to far better explore the wider site and so we were able to explore and located a gully with three carronades (cannons) from the Racehorse. We’d not found any carronades on any previous dives, so to locate a gully containing three was fantastic – and exactly what we’d hoped for. It’s excellent for the Isle of Man to have this Essex University link , and enjoyable to assist Jon with the photogrammetry and more detailed site mapping using the UWIS system on this historic wreck site that is of historic significance for the IOM and RNLI. Jon is planning to return in 2024 with more technology and I look forward to seeing what we might discover!
leigh3666.wordpress.com 