Guides
Cowshill Quarry
!!This is a preliminary guide only and will be updated!!
Sometimes it is necessary to do some freshwater dives to check your kit configuration or carry out some training, travelling to Stoney Cove can be costly from the North East of England so perhaps this alternative undeveloped site in Weardale is an option?
{mosmap lat='54.761234'|lon='-2.232027' }
Recommended suppliers
Latest Photographs
A Ling (Molua molua), this one zipped past me at speed and went into it's hidey hole, it was quite a size, maybe three feet long.
A female Common Dragonet (Callionymus lyra), this one didn't want to move and simply shuffled deeper into the sand as the lens got closer.
A view of conditions with the sea smashing onto the end of Seahouses golf course, this storm really changed wreck topography on North facing sites with Yewglen hugely bashed about and changed
Calypso.....ready for anything that the world can throw at her!
A square 'chute' standing upright, pre-2019 this was flat so the storms have obvioulsy shifted about. I could have done with being lower to take a 'thru-photo' and a subject at the other side would have been good.
A very large, well the largest that I have ever seen Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris), she was out and about for a full day so I guess that she was replete having eaten crab and either was enjoying a post-paradial sun bathing session or had a full stomach meaning she couldn't get in and out of her hole with ease!
Engine parts sticking out of the sand, I assume these held on the cylinders........
A view over the broken 'bottom' with a random diver. At times the site does resemble diver soup usually when prevailing conditions are poor limiting access to other areas or when the seals are in residence.
A 'fresh' Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus) that was washed up at Embleton. Great was my joy at being able to tell the guys at St Andrews University that this specimen had washed up and it was sweetened by adding that we had already toild Newcastle University of the stranding
The front end of a lobster (Homarus gammarus), there are more and more blue fiends on this site, a fact down to the lack of predators of smaller lobsters, that is to say not a huge amount of cod about!
This smaller donkey boiler is standing on one of the flate ends and large sections of the outer case have, over the years, come adrift meaning that you can look in on the various tubes and pipes. To find it when you get out from the cut through Knifestone follow the wall right.
The upper mounting position where the pin would fit
Not a good shot but one of the rebreather chaps next to the rudders, these stand about 6m proud of the bottom of the vessel and are intact despite the explosive forces used to remove the phosphor bronze propellors which were located very, very close.
Over the boulders and further along the bottom becomes 'paved', again, plenty of filter feeding life but not much opportunity for crabs and lobbies.
The concreted in anchor, this is located on its own 'up' the gully on the seaward side of the Hopper rock
It's easy to see that these are not machine made as the top of the shaft is round whilst the 'point' is square section and the head is simply a piece of shaft 'peened' over.
Again in dating terms nails were machine made from the start of the nineteenth centrury so a useful dating aid providing that you find 'lots'. If you only locate one or two it may be that teh ships carpenter made them for a specific job.
Oh, lots of nails also implies that the ship was copper sheathed, again useful in dating terms.
Most of the time you are dropped in and see this, a forest of kelp (Order Laminariales)
The rocks, which are a soft 'holey' shale are coated in a pretty pink coralline growth
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
