Duo-Divers

A substantial coupling!

A shoal of sardines scurried past at one point, nothing large chasing though!

The ships were built for speed, with plates rivetted together, the rivets will have been made from a softer material with less cobalt/manganese so have rotted away leaving rows of holes and allowing the paltes to start slipping.

A Short Spined Sea-Scorpion (Myoxocephalus scorpius), a nice 'easy' fish to get nice photographs of, as you can probably tell if you go through all of the albums.

Sponges tend to have colonised kelp by late in the season, I think that this particular sponge is Stelletta lactea but I could be wrong.

A lump of anchor chain, some of the minimal evidence that a ship sank here.

And the business end of the same gun, in this case a crab has set-up shop but most of the time they are home to conger eels!

More bits from the broken up boiler

Looking back towards the Carnatic from the bowsprit, Abu Nuhas Reef

A compressed air tank, as used to blow ballast from the tanks and enable the submarine to surface. There are loads of these dotted around the site, they are not torpedos, lost dive cylinders or similar and to date I haven't managed to find any with the brass valves in place.

If the skipper 'drops a goolie' and puts you in 'off' the guns then finding them in this kelp can be challenging to say the least

Sometimes you will find 'odd' weights as you work along the site

This is the lair and just visible part of the Common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) that lives there, if you look in some of the 'squattie burrows' quite a few contain octopus that have eaten the original owner and set up shop!

The velvet swimming crab (necora puber), there are always some about and 'prod' one and it will swim away.....honest!

Another boiler, this one has a large lump of machinery to the south and is pretty much intact

Not as common as in Southern waters or even around Howick but here is a Lesser Spotted Catshark, or should that be dogfish? (Scyliorhinus canicula) Years ago you rarely saw any but they are becoming more common, in 2018 a party of divers got photos of a large Tope out at the Farne Islands.....apex predators you have been warned!

Plates and spars towards the stern of the wreck