Duo-Divers

A Pogge (Agonus cataphractus) or is that Hook-nose or Armoured Bullhead, these are a relativeliy common critter but with their camouflage you tend to see their pearly white barbules before anything else.

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.

Huzzah, I do like finding a tosheroon, in this case where tide and rock formation have caused a build up of lost fishing weights. You can rapidly find a huge amount of weights if you are scouring a virgin area as there tends to be quite a few of these on any length of reef

This valve had been wedged under the boiler at Beadnell Point for a long time.....

A large edible crab (Cancer pagurus) in among the dead-mans fingers.

Large areas of the wreck are now down to the ribs, as can be seen on this shot

As is my wont a scenic shot of the bows.

This piece stands proud of the seabed maybe eight feet and forms a large H, not sure what it is though....

Broken bottom and divers!!

More s'cenic stuff 'showing the hull rent where the engine room has been blasted open.

A Devonshire cup-coral (Caryophyllia smithii), there are loads of these multi-coloured critters on the wreckage

As you get closer to the cliff then there is more sandstone bedrock and the doleritic limestone boulders get smaller.....there are also more edible sea-urchins, not that you would!

Lucy from 'Natural England' she was doing a recce and spent most of the dives picking up samples of weed.

The top of the Point is battered with wave and tide which makes it attractive for filter feeders such as barnacles which are securely anchored but weeds, well it is difficult but there are plenty of the 'bootlace' weeds which I guess are ideally shaped to apply minimal forces to the roots.

It's been part polished now but this nameplate for the Boatswains Cabin was taken from SS Abessinia on Knifestone at the Farne Islands. There must be hundreds or perhaps thousands of dives per year and you can still, on occasion, pick up something 'nice'.

I know the location of a porthole which is currently covered, when the next storm removes the cover I will be there with my tools and implements!

More girders and struts, this is a good distance from the main lumps of superstructure but the shallow water and big seas does increasingly move stuff about

You can probably see from the general topography that the reef or should that be reefs run east west and as you get closer to the access point you will start seeing more bits of reef poking up, kinda pointing the way out!

A keel pin from the site on the South Side of Beadnell Point

A smallish lobster (Homarus gammarus) out for a stroll in-among the kelp and weed.

A windlass, bow gear, hanging on the deck at ninety degrees to where it should be, if the wreck is on it's side it can be so disconcerting with good vis!