Duo Divers - Beadnell

Hermit Crab (pagurus bernhardus)

The propellor, the size and also length of the prop shaft make me think it was an awful big trawler!

A healthy reef with lots of diverse fish life.

Scalloped hammerhead shark (sphymidae lewini), the first thing that you saw was the white line of their heads when they swam from the blue in to the limits of your visibility.

It was at about this stage that machining the trunions entered the 'too hard box', the blank was machined flat and I decided to push fit and solder in brass rod.

The flukes of a big danforth anchor.......the absence of major ship type lumps makes me think that an anchor was depolyed in an emergency when the ship wasn't lost.

A Common Hermit Crab (Pagurus bernhardus) this one is in a winkle shell and was quite happy trying to stare me down, cheeky little blighter!

A gun on Hokoyu Maru, made in 1898 on the banks of the River Tyne.

A shaggy mouse slug, or sea mouse or more accurately Aeolidia papillosa, this one was spotted quite early in the season.

A pair of Robust Ghost Pipefish (solenostomus cyanopterus)

A Dahlia Anemone (Urticinia felina)

A resting Leopard shark (triakis semifasciata), the nack is get in the sand and move slowly......

A shoal of immature Bib (Trisopterus luscus) this shoal was always around a particular large rock on the site, not sure why, guess that there is a subtle current split or join?

Sea Hare (aplysia punctata) you get loads and loads of them on the south side of the point feeding and breeding!

The Staple Sound side of the site is a wall smothered in Dead mans Fingers (Alcyonium digitatum) and is a great scenic dive!

The John L coming in for a pick up on quite a blustery day

This is the remains of the wooden salvage dock that sank during operations, it's even less photogenic than the ship and connected via a length of blue poly-prop rope so that divers can go from one to the other in a single dive

Grey Seal (halichoerus grypus), just staring...........

Lion Fish (pterois volitans)

The only place that I have ssen something similar is a 'fancy support' to a compass binnacle, this however would not have been fitted to MV Yewglen and is obviously an earlier vintage

Jewel Anemones (Corynactis viridis) on a stanchion with SS James Eagen Layne

The boiler has large holes at the top so you get ambient light coming in, nice.

A free-swimming conger eel (conger conger) in an internal corridor of HMS Scylla

Looking at the breech assembly of a deck gun.

Coming over the top of the bridge area, the large lights are long gone although the posts remain, draped in netting which has a surprisingly large mesh size.

Bubbles escaping from Kensho Maru, although not as "visited" as Thistlegorm these wrecks are slowly falling apart, so visit now while you can get inside and penetrate.

A large Dahlia Anemone (Urticina felina) there are loads of these around St Abbs

Dimensionally similar to a WW2 RP-3 rocket

A brittlestar, all I can say is Echinoderm of the genus Ophiucodea......

Nudibranch time again!

A remaining davit on the starboard side of the vessel, it is still inboard which implies that the boat wasn't launched. Bearing in mind she sank in between 3 - 5 minutes not surprising really.

A Stonefish (synanceia verrucosa), stand on one of these and you have a whole lot of trouble!

A sea lemon (Archidoris pseudoargus) you see quite a few of these and the trick is to approach slowly so they are unawre of your presence and leave their flowery gills out and in the water. Once again I was unsucessful!

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.....

Giant Moray Eel (gymnothorax javanicus) being cleaned by small cleaner wrasse

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.

A Painted Goby (Pomatoschistus pictus) a very common small fish that follows divers around hoping that some small creatures, its next meal, are dislodged.

Duo-Divers

When one isn't enough

Beadnell - SoP (07.17)

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