Duo-Divers

These Spiny Starfish (Marthasterias glacialis) are very common and again in common with most starfish a good subject for macro work as you can get close and take very good textural and close up shots.

As is my wont a scenic shot of the bows.

A scenic of the bow, due to the previous salvage operation it has 'snapped' and fallen away from centre to left of the photograph

Large lengths of plastic service pipe are ideal for training in an overhead environment

A gun sticking out from the side of the wreck, along with a few 'blurry' coalfish

This waterlogged piece of wood, which I think had been a fence post was covered in hard pink coraline and very 'pretty', once underwater it doesn't take long for detritus and junk to be absorbed into the eco-system

And a mechanical 'thing'

A Spiny Spider Crab (Maja squinado) common enough down south on on the West Coast of Scotland but not so many around the Farne Islands.

An atmospheric (arty-farty) shot showing one of the large overhangs on the North side of this site.

A Long Legged Spider Crab (Macropodia rostrata) there are loads on all or most sites, this is the most common 'camouflage'.

There are more and more dahlia anemone (Urticina felina) appearing on the site, I do worry that a hard winter storm will dislodge and kill most of them but hey!

Until we were lens to nose, so to speak!

Maybe not totally original but having bullied the crab I pushed my torch inside the barrel of this gun..............

Another view close to the upright showing some of the hull flattened on the bottom.

In common with most southern sites there were loads of Snale locks anemones (Anemonia viridis) on surfaces where there was sun and water movement.

You get two colours of Plumose Anemone (Metridium senile) white and orange, both look like cold willies when closed up but very pretty when open and feeding!

K - So the next step was to find someone to make a base, I thought about mounting on four wooden legs but that was 'too vanilla' so we went to a local blacksmith

G - With the cabinet maker doing the job machining and then joining up the three planks to a coffee table size piece

Believe it or not a Gravel Sea Cucumber (Neopentadadactyla mixta) under the tentacles there is a creature living in a hole!

A view of the bottom plus another piece of large debris, again WTF?

Over the boulders and further along the bottom becomes 'paved', again, plenty of filter feeding life but not much opportunity for crabs and lobbies.

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.