Guides
Babbacombe Bay
A very good early season dive with cuttlefish and later on for smaller critters.
{mosmap lat='50.4792'|lon='-3.5099' }
Latest Photographs


As well as lobsters there are also crabs hiding among the rocks and stuff
Typical farne site, a 'wall' down to a slowly sloping rock and boulder bottom.
This is the rounded section of stern and you can see how it's all falling apart as age causes a general degradation of the thinner steel used on these vessels, I don't think that there will be much left of the smaller vessels on the bicentennary of WW1
I think part of a mast, I did think prop shaft from a smaller vessel but winter storms revealed that at least one of the ends is sealed.
Inside the plane
A King....or Common....or Great Scallop (Pecten maximus) this one was just about to 'jet off'.
Another shot of the propellor tip, this time from the side, maybe looking at the two shots it makes sense.
If you want to head into the wreck this is one of the access points!
Concreted crap like a plum pudding of rust, brass bits and stones. Every year more is broken up as the sea gets 'underneath' and frees the brass. That's why those early dives are important, lots of bits freed and available to be picked up.
Looking along the wreckage of the Mistley, you can see the ribs or joints on the bottom.
A Marbled swimming crab (Liocarcinus marmoreus), very similar to the velvet swimming crab, maybe a touch lighter in colour
Settling down on a patch of gravel and waiting until I bimbled over.......
The anchor chain, you can see a link here, is wrapped around the vessel and with the shot-line tied at one side it really is 'difficult to loose the line and have to do a blue water ascent.
and closer.....
Arty-farty shot of a Velvet Swimming Crab (Necora puber)
A typical north east wreck dive, plates, boilers n bits. In this case probably Jan Van Ryswyck although a few vessels have foundered so the bits are somehwhat mixed!
As you move south the wreck doesn't appear to peter out and you do need more than a couple of dives to do the site justice
There are plenty of King Scallops (Pecten maximus) there are loads about here having been dumped as undersize by divers.
Photo 2 and still squabblin' the pair of Lobsters (Homarus gammarus) arguing over a hidey hole and not a particularly good one, basically a rock over one of the cracks which run down the flat face of the South Side of beadnell Point.