Guides
Babbacombe Bay
A very good early season dive with cuttlefish and later on for smaller critters.
{mosmap lat='50.4792'|lon='-3.5099' }
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Latest Photographs
Wreckage from SS Mistley, in this case from near the stern. This structure was only eally 'thrown up' after storms a couple of winters ago!
This was a bloody funny shaped fishing weight, quite heavy too, so I took a photo!
Caught a fraction of a second prior to a zoom away exit a Common Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), probably why a lot of 'non-locals' dive Babbacombe, I was a touch late this year.
Looking at the breech assembly of a deck gun.
An Edible Crab (Cancer pagurus), there a few of these critters about but most if not all are of a size that would mean little or no meat, that said technically they would be legal...
If you look carefully at shots of Yewglen you will see that she had a pair of rubbing strakes welded onto the side of he hull, another positive bit of identification!
Sometimes you will find 'odd' weights as you work along the site
You can see that the 'wall' is more a stepped solid stone reef, smothered in life.
I am somewhat adept at finding taps which are then cleaned and nailed onto the shed-wall! This one was on Yewglen and all that was showing was a small bit of the handle and outlet, it came out of the iron crud really easily.
A Devonshire cup-coral (Caryophyllia smithii), there are loads of these multi-coloured critters on the wreckage
Flat bits of plate, be that deck or hull are all over the site, I think they are deck as they are flat with very little in the way of thick metal ribs, but I do get things wrong.
The divers favourite a Tompot Blenny (Parablennius gattorugine) this one was busy 'ripping' bits of food from a childs drop-net that you can just see in the background, so more than happy to pose for pictures as there was food about!
A common hermit crab (Pagurus bernhardus), this one was a tad larger and seemed to have eggs around the rim of the shell.
It's been part polished now but this nameplate for the Boatswains Cabin was taken from SS Abessinia on Knifestone at the Farne Islands. There must be hundreds or perhaps thousands of dives per year and you can still, on occasion, pick up something 'nice'.
I know the location of a porthole which is currently covered, when the next storm removes the cover I will be there with my tools and implements!
The same tower slightly further out, the slits are located around the entire diameter of the tower to allow the crew to see any assailent and take appropriate actions.
Work over the site and you will see odd bits of iron jammed into cracks and fissures on the sea-bed
If you look down into the heavily salvaged engine space you can see the prop shaft, the hole down is about 20m to the inverted deck, quite a drop.....
Bizarre clowns at depth......great with a touch of narcosis!
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