Photo credit: Nick Watson
BSAC divers and Centres are being asked to help Historic England understand the effectiveness and usefulness of protected wreck dive trails on the seabed.
Historic England have commissioned MSDS Marine to undertake an undertake a strategic review of physical dive trails on England’s protected wreck sites.
Historic England has provided funding for the installation of physical dive trails on the seabed on several protected wreck sites. These comprise of stations marking out key features on the wreck, lines connecting the stations together, and interpretative material in the form of waterproof booklets, site maps, and dive slates.
The trails require regular maintenance to ensure they stay functional. Marine growth needs to be removed from lines, plaques and buoys, and occasionally stations and lines will need replacing.
This short project will undertake a review of the use of the physical dive trails and provide recommendations for how Historic England can support volunteer licensees in the ongoing maintenance of these trails.
This survey is part of that project and will allow the project team to understand how divers, centres and charter skippers interact with dive trails on protected wreck sites. This in turn will help to target funding so that divers get the benefit.
The survey will only take a maximum of 10 minutes and could really help forward planning - and hopefully even more groups willing to support diver trails on their own favourite protected wreck.
Examples of dive trails include:
- Normans Bay
- Thorness Bay
- Colossus
- Coronation
- Iona II
All of these historic dive sites are great dives, made more interesting because of the diver trails.
