Diving Thoughts

The Mary Rose was built in Portsmouth in 1509-1510 and was one of the most powerful warships afloat in the Tudor era. She sank in the Solent on 19 July 1545, but was rediscovered and finally raised  in 1982. She now lies in a dry dock in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard, very close to Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory. There is also a museum about the ship, but this is half a mile away near the dockyard gates.

Now planning permission for a new GBP 35 million building has been granted, and this building will be built around the dock containing the ship.  Galleries shaped like the ship’s missing port side will be built and will hold items from the wreck displayed in their original context. Galleries at either end of the ship will contain other artefacts and exhibits. At the moment only 6% of the 19,000 artefacts from the ship are displayed, so a lot of items will be displayed for the first time.

Building work is expected to start in the autumn.

The Sydney Morning Herald are reporting that scientists have examined the wounds sustained bya surfer on 12th February, and concluded that they were caused by a 2.5 metre great white shark.  Glenn Orgias was bitten while surfing at Bondi beach at around 8pm and suffered severe injuries to his hand. He is now stable in hospital.

Two days earlier a navy clearance diver was injured at Woolloomooloo by what is believed to have been a 2.7 metre bull shark.

Last June we posted a story about an Elizabethan warship that had been found off Alderney dating from around 1592. Further research seems to be confirming some of the initial findings, that Elizabeth I’s navy was becoming more professional and effective. Tests seem to show that was carrying powerful cast iron guns of a uniform size, firing standard ammunition. This was in stark contrast to the Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, which carried a wide variety of different weapons, many of which had been designed for land warfare.

The Alderney wreck was a pinnace, which would have carried 12 cannon, two of which have been recovered. Using these, replicas have been built and tested, which seem to show that they were capable of throwing shot at almost the speed of sound. While the guns are relatively small, theywere powerful enough to hit a target up to a mile away. Although whether they were accurate enough is another question. However, at a more typical fighting distance of around 100 yards, they packed enough of a punch to have been able to penetrate the oak planks of a ship and go out the other side.

Elizabeth’s navy seems to have worked out that a lot of smaller guns all firing at once, was more effective than a few larger guns. Presumably there would also have been a significant benefit in standardising gun sizes and ammunition. Although drawing the conclusions about standardisation when they have only recovered 2 of the cannons, is perhaps a bit of a stretch.

There is a good article on this from the BBC website, along with video of the tests they carried out on one of the replica cannon.

According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, shark attacks worldwide have fallen from71 in 2007 to 59 in 2008.  But of these 4 were fatal in 2008 compared to only 1 in 2007. Surfers appear to be their victims of choice, making up 57% of the total. Divers account for 8%, with swimmers and waders making up the rest. Even so, these are very low numbers considering how many people use the world’s oceans.

George Burgess, an ichthyologist and director of the International Shark Attack File, which is housed at the University of Florida’s Museum of Natural History, thinks that this apparent decline could be partly because of the effects of the recession reducing the number of people holidaying on beaches.

The Danton was a French battleship was laid down in 1906 and launched in 1909. She was a pre-dreadnought battleship which served with the French Mediterranean Fleet in the First World War. On 18th March 1917 she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, U-64, while travelling between Toulon and Corfu.  She was carrying 1102  men, which was more than normal as she was carrying the crew of other ships to Corfu. 896 were rescued, but 296 including her captain, Captain Delage, were lost.

It has just been announced that in late 2007 a company doing a survey for  a gas pipeline discovered the wreck in 1000 metres of water, sitting upright with most of her gun turrets intact. The wreck is 35 km SW of Sardinia, some distance from where she was reported lost.

According to a BBC article, Rob Hawkins, project director with Fugro GeoConsulting Limited said that  “Its condition is extraordinary.” He also said that “After it was hit by the torpedoes, the Danton clearly turned turtle and rotated several times. You can see where it dropped some infrastructure on the way down and then impacted on the seabed. You can see where it slid along the seabed before coming to a rest,”

Researchers compared the position of its heavy guns with those shown on the original plans to confirm its identity.

The gas pipeline has been diverted south-east of the wreck location to avoid the wreck and any structural items that may have fallen from it as it fell to the seabed.

The photographs are from  BBC’s website where you can read the full story and even see some video of the wreck.

Mon 24 Nov: It was raining lightly when we set off towards Haast Pass. We stopped to look at some waterfalls, then stopped at Davis Flats for a walk up a Bridle path. The path goes all the way up to Haast Pass, but we were only going to go part of the way. It was a nice track alongside the river, heading gradually upwards. Quite muddy in places, but fairly easy walking. Eventually we crossed the river and headed up through some woods, before finally turning round and heading back the way we came. It was a lovely walk and the high point of the day.

Back in the car and the rain picked up a bit and by the time we reached Haast Pass itself, it was bucketing down. As we drove down the other side the engine started to smell, so we pulled off just after a bridge and left it to cool down, while we went for a look at the river, which was cascading down a narrow gorge.

Back in the car we carried on heading towards Haast, when we had the chance to be heroes. Well, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but it sounds good. We had slowed down significantly because of the torrential rain, but not everyone had been quite so cautious. We came around a bend to find someone flagging us down, and with a huge truck on one side of the road we didn’t have a lot of choice but to stop. In the ditch on the left hand side up to its wheel arches in mud/water was an 18 seat tour bus towing a trailer carrying bikes. The large truck was there to pull it out, which looked as though it was going to be a bit tricky. Our part in the proceedings wasn’t as dramatic – we got to ferry 2 of the stranded passengers into Haast. It turned out that they were part of a group of around 12 Germans who were doing a cycling tour of New Zealand. Given how hilly it was, we were impressed, although they did say that they’d take the bus up the hills, and cycle down them. We dropped them off at a hotel in Haast, and stopped there for lunch, hoping the rain would clear.

By the time we left it was still pelting down, but the Germans’ driver had turned up. They had managed to get his bus out of the ditch, and it only seemed to have minor damage to the front. I think they’d abandoned their plans for the rest of the day because as we left they were getting stuck into large quantities of alcohol and all having a good laugh about their experience. That was in stark contrast to what our 2 passengers had been saying about the driver while they were in our car.

We headed north. The rain did ease up a bit, but had been so heavy the roads were running with water and visibility wasn’t great. Finally we made it to Fox Glacier, and headed into town to find somewhere to stay. Then we checked with Fox Glacier Guiding, with whom we had arranged to do a full day glacier hike  the following day. They weren’t very optimistic that it would be going but told us to check back in the morning.

We tried driving down to Lake Matheson, which has spectacular views of Mounts Cook and Tasman on a clear day. This wasn’t a clear day, and the road had so much water on it, that we turned round and  opted for an early dinner and a beer in our backpackers instead.  We had expected the West Coast to be wet. And it is!

If you’ve ever wondered what your carbon footprint is, now you can find out.  There is a carbon calculator that can assess how much of an impact you have on the environment.  It takes you through a series of questions about where in Hong Kong you live, how much electricity you use, how much you travel on the MTR, buses, taxis, etc. And in the end it works out what your carbon footprint is.

You can try it out on Climateer’s website.

Yesterday was really foggy in Hong Kong and visibility was better underwater than it was on the surface!  SCDC headed out to Fury Rocks for one dive, to be followed by a seafood lunch. This was going to be more of a sociable day out than a diving day, as we had 3 overseaDiving Thoughts › Edit Post — WordPresss visitors 2 of whom were ex-SCDC members – Steve P, Cheryl and Mick. 9:30 saw us leaving the pier at Aberdeen Boat Club and heading east to Fury Rocks. The sea was very flat, but the fog was really bad. As we sailed along, large ships would emerge from the mist in an eery, ghostly fashion.

We finally arrived at the dive site and Brian, David and Rob deployed a shot line. Their plan was to do a circular search for a shot weight that went missing several months ago. My plan, on the other hand, was to get the dive over with as quickly as possible so we could head to Po Toi for lunch and a few beers. At least that was my plan until I saw the water. Visibility must have been well over 10 metres, certainly the best I’ve seen in Hong Kong for two or three years.

I put on Andreas’s semi-dry suit much to Steve’s amusement, as he pointed out that Andreas and I were the same weight, but different heights. Consequently the suit’s legs  were hanging over the end of my feet, and I had to roll the sleeves up. But, whether I looked like an idiot or not, I did feel warm. Rita, complete with brand-new, working pressure gauge (unlike last week) was navigating and we dropped down under the boat to about 10 metres. From there we could still see the junk quite clearly. We swam along the rocky reef, seeing some evidence of what presumably was a very broken up wooden wreck. The soft corals were prolific and a riot of colours. There were stacks of scorpion fish, a school of 15-20 stripeys, plus a moray that was out foraging. There was also a line of fish traps, although they looked as though they had been there for a while and there were no fish in any of them.

The topography of the site is really nice, with lots of large rocks, as well as nooks and crannies to explore. Lots of shrimp and nudibranchs, and not very many urchins, which made a nice change. We turned round after about 20 minutes and made our way back towards the boat. Rita had decided to ignore the usual guideline and we’d gone with the current to start with instead of heading into it. I think this was because she only had a 5mm wetsuit on, so would be starting to get cold on the way back, so by coming back into the current the exercise would warm her up! It certainly warmed me up – tired me out as well. Finally we made it back below the boat, where the people on the deck could see us clearly enough to tell  which of us was which – quite impressive since we were in 10 metres of water.

The final divers to go in were the threesome who were going to do the circular search. Meanwhile the rest of us were shouting words of encouragement such as “Get a move one, we’re hungry” and “If you’re not back in 45 minutes you’ll have to swim to the restaurant”.  We impatiently waited for them, but at least we got to eat the brownies that Let had brought along.

Finally Rob surfaced about 100 yards from the boat, but the others’ bubbles were heading under the boat and beyond. It seemed very odd that they could be so far apart, especially in such good visibility, so the assembed masses were looking forward to some advanced mickey-taking of the poor unfortunates. The mystery was explained later when Brian claimed that it was planned, because Rob was low on air so they sent him to the surface while they carried on with the dive. We were almost convinced, until Rob announced that he’d been expecting them to follow him up!

Brian brought back some strange beastie that none of us could recognise, which he stuck in a bucket of sea water so he could photograph it. Meanwhile the club gastronomes were arguing about the best way to cook it, and whether it was going to taste as rubbery as it looked. Before we could find out Brian dropped it over the side

Lunch at Po Toi was excellent as always, and we had the odd beer or two before heading back to Aberdeen. Thanks to Trevor and Catheryn for marshalling a very successful day out.

A day after a navy clearance diver was injured by a shark, there has been a second attack near Sydney. This time off Bondi beach a 33 year old nearly lost his hand.

NSW Primary Industry Minister, Ian Macdonald, warned people not to swim at dawn or dusk.  Meanwhile an aquarist from Sydney aquarium questioned teh value of the shark nets, claiming that 40% of sharks caught in the nets are actually leaving the beach area. She sees the nets as glorified fishing tools designed to catch sharks rather than protect bathers.

You can read more from the Sydney Morning Herald.

An Australian navy diver has been seriously injured in Sydney Harbour after being attacked by a shark.  The 31 year-old was part of a clearance diving team based at HMAS Penguin and fought off the shark at Woolloomooloo  Bay.  Someone from the National Parks and Wildlife Service said that February and March is when you tend to get more sharks and surface fish in the harbour. The feeling is that this was a bull shark.

There is quite an extensive story in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Last Saturday I finally got around to my first dive of 2009, and my first dive in the Year of the Ox. South China Diving Club went to the South-west corner of Basalt Island, near Sai Kung.

I’ve never been an enthusiastic winter diver even in Hong Kong, where the water temperature only dips to the mid-teens Centigrade. This is because my old 2 piece 4mm wetsuit never felt particularly warm even when it was new, 18 years ago. Oh, and I don’t like hoods or thick gloves. But this weekend I was planning to dive in Andreas’s old Mares 6mm semi-drysuit, which looks as though it will be a really good suit – when I’ve grown into it. Since he’s at least 4 inches taller than I am, the neck seal seals perfectly around my forehead. Brian reckons I need a periscope.  Sadly, at the moment, the only bit that fits me is around the beer gut.

Anyway I gamely got into this suit, but Andreas wasn’t going to let me off that lightly, because he also lent me a pair of semi-dry boots and semi-dry gloves. Plus a hood. I have never needed a “dresser” before but this time I did, particularly when I’d got the gloves on because my hands became completely useless. My only contribution to this dressing process was to tear the seal on one of the boots, at which point Andreas and Rita took over to make sure I didn’t damage anything else. I then tried to expel all the air from the suit but that was a waste of time, since, while the neck seal sealed perfectly around my head, it didn’t seal at all around my neck. Despite all this I have to say that I felt pretty warm, even if I looked a bit odd. To finish off with I put the hood on and immediately went deaf, and then had to be helped into my harness and wing because I couldn’t bend my arms properly to do it myself.

Meanwhile Rita was having her own problems. After trying the third tank that only had 120 bar in it, she began to suspect that the contents gauge might be the problem, not the tanks. A quick check with another gauge confirmed her suspicions, although if we hit her gauge hard enough we were able to get the needle to move.  After scrounging another contents gauge she was back in business, but without her regular console she was now compass-less, giving her a good excuse to be lazy and make me navigate. In addition, she was diving in her old 5mm suit and was worried she’d be too cold.

We jumped in and did a buoyancy test and I passed, by which I mean I was buoyant – too buoyant. Another 3 lbs later and we finally dropped into relatively clear water. Visibility must have been around 6-8 metres, dropping off slightly as we got deeper. Since the boat was anchored relatively shallow, we headed out and down a slope to 16 metres. There was quite good fish life and we came across a large moray, a pair of butterflyfish and a number of nudibranchs. There was some nice soft coral and a school of sweepers hiding under some of the bigger boulders. After 20 minutes we turned around and headed back. I was reassured to see the same moray we’d passed on the way out. The boat had swung slightly, but the visibility was good enough that we were able to find it without too much trouble.

For the second dive we headed shorewards towards one of the large caves, before turning parallel to the shore. There was some surge, but a very interesting rocky topography. Fish life was good along here as well, with more nudibranchs too. We headed back towards the boat and I decided to deploy my dSMB. This is where I found that my unfamiliarity with thick gloves was a slight problem. It took me longer than usual to connect the spool to the dSMB, then it took me 2 attempts to get any air into the bag. Finally I managed to fill it and then I hit my biggest problem – I couldn’t wind the line round the spool properly. My left hand couldn’t hold the spool tightly enough so it just turned in my hand, and the gloves were so bulky that they kept getting in the way of whatever line I did wrap around it. The one positive thing to come out of this is that I provided some much-needed entertainment to my cold, shivering buddy, who had to keep clearing her mask because she was laughing so much. Finally I made it to the surface, then nearly dropped the spool before I’d had time secure the line.

All in all it was a couple of pretty good dives, and I have to say that, despite all the aggravation kitting up, I was toasty-warm in the water. At this rate I might be doing a few more dives this winter than usual. Although I need to do something about those gloves!

The BBC has some good aerial video of narwhals navigating through cracks in the Arctic sea ice on their summer migration.  You can see it here.