In fact, that cross is a very important safety feature for any of the marine users navigating this part of the English Channel for its the Sovereign Light Tower.

Around about that point on the sea bed there’s a sand bank and at low tide it can be as shallow as about 2.5-3 meters.  That’s been a hazard to shipping over the years and has seen many ships run aground.

In olden days, to prevent this happening, there was an actual ship called the Royal Sovereign that had a lighthouse on it and was anchored on the bank to prevent ships running aground.

In modern times, the boat has been replaced by a more formal structure, which consists of a tower sticking into the sea bed with a helicopter platform and a lighthouse on top of it.

If you get a chance take one of the boat tours out there, it’s certainly well worth a look.

With high tides and strong gales Eastbourne marina’s outer seawall breakwaters have been tested.

As the photo I took yesterday below shows, the waves were having a great time hitting the breakwaters…

The photo shows an underwater frame, which is one technique of surveying all or part of a dive site. The other technique we used…

… involves taking relative measurements from one or more fixed line/s (datum) that are set-up on the dive site.

Doing this type of thing was great fun, but also highlighted what you take for granted on ‘dry land’.

Underwater, you aren’t able to talk to your buddy other than through primative sign language, writing on a slate is harder, and you need to remember to breathe ;-)

Overall a very busy and interesting one-day course.

We all plan to do the next level course later in the year, so watch this space for a review of that.

Related Articles

For more posts about this course checkout:

• The previous article on this course

Here’s a photo of a couple of them:

The Sea Squirt is a semi-transparent tube-like critter, averaging the size of an adult index finger.

The photo is in macro mode so you can just about see the close-up details of the sea squirt, and you’ll notice some colouration around the opening at the top of the body.

This helps identify it as a yellow ringed sea squirt (ciona intestinalis).

Sea squirts have a sac-like body with two siphons (one to inhale and the other to exhale) through which they siphon water from which they extract nutrients.

Related Articles

For more posts with photos of life in the marina, click here…

Other Posts from this Dive

This post was written following a Dive in North Harbour on 14th April 2007, for other posts relating to this dive, including more photos, please checkout the following:

• Focus on Jellyfish in Eastbourne Marina
• Focus on Starfish in Sovereign Harbour

As part of these plans, five dive club members attended an Introductory course delivered by the Nautical Archaeological Society (NAS) on 28th April, at the NAS headquarters in Portsmouth.

The course was split into three parts:

• Firstly some classroom lectures about the scope of marine archaeology and the legal and social requirements;
• Secondly there was a practical exercise of surveying a mock dive site on dry land;
• Finally, the surveying exercise was transferred to a local swimming pool, and we had to try to repeat the measuring whilst remembering to breath ;-)

The first two parts of the day were very informative, and the two course presenters managed to get across the finer points of what could easily have been a very dry (no pun intended) course with a great deal of enthusiasm and fun.

The underwater part of the course will be covered in a future post.

Related Articles

For more posts about this course checkout:

• The next article on this course

The photo below shows one of around 30 starfish that I swam over during my dive:

The photo shows the commonest of the starfish I encountered, and this one was one of the largest at about 20cms across.

You’ll also notice (if you squint a little) that there are quite a few shellfish living nearby.

Related Articles

For more posts with photos of life in the marina, click here…

Other Posts from this Dive

This post was written following a Dive in North Harbour on 14th April 2007, for other posts relating to this dive, including more photos, please checkout the following:

• Focus on Jellyfish in Eastbourne Marina

The club’s efforts over the past four years were rewarded by winning the newly created ‘Environment’ award for helping to clear up one of their dive sites, in and around North Harbour of Sovereign Marina.

Read on for more photos of the event, and also last year’s clean-up…

The Professional Association of Dive Instructors (PADI) is the world’s leading training organisation for scuba diving and they take environmental resposibility and marine protection very seriously.

Planet Divers take this on board and participate in PADI’s annual Project Aware exercise to clean-up dive sites and increase the awareness of pollution and its affects on the local environment to the general public.

Last year the event in North Harbour coincided with the Charity Dragon Boat races, and the Club’s marquee was swamped with celebrities involved in the races, as well as local people who were happy to help out.

Each year, Planet Divers’ Project Aware event has got bigger and bigger, and has received more support from local businesses and residents.

Although the majority of Planet Divers’ members are involved in Project Aware to some extent, Claire Pooley has taken on the role of Project Leader for these activities and has been the driving force behind getting local businesses to contribute something to the event.

Watch this blog for details of further clean-ups, both in the marina and on the local beaches.

Jon Martin

Thought I’d start with something you can see without having to get wet :-)

This time of the year, all areas of Sovereign Harbour are awash with jellyfish like the ones in the picture below:

Read on to hear what it’s like to dive with them…

As you can see from the photo, the visibility in the marina was quite good (for the marina at least). You can just about see my dive buddy Chris in the background; he’s about 5-feet away.

The jellyfish varied in size from tiny ones about the size of a 50p piece, to the largest which were around the diameter of a CD.

What about the sting I hear you ask…

Well fortunately, although they do sting, it isn’t a very powerful one. With the protection of my scuba gear (dry suit, gloves and hood), the only exposed part of my body is my face, and after a 50-minute dive, my cheeks tingled a little, something like mild stinging nettles.

Related Articles

For more posts with photos of life in the marina, click here…

Did you know that it contains, amongst other things, some seahorses…
…

Local boat fisherman Martin Wiltshire revealed at a recent meeting of Planet Divers scuba club, that he’s been capturing a number of seahorses in his nets whilst fishing off of Eastbourne.

Amazingly this hasn’t been an isolated incident, and often there are more than one.

Here’s a photo of two seahorses recently captured:

Fortunately for the unfortunate seahorses, Martin is an avid diver and keeps all seahorses on board until he can return to Sovereign Harbour, where he can release them in the calm waters of the marina.

To date  he has released around ten seahorses of a variety of sizes, and the hopes are that they can develop into a breeding colony.

I have some more photos which I will add once I’ve setup a photo gallery feature that I’m currently investigating. 

Let me know what you think,

Wishing you health, success and happiness in everything you do,

Jon

It is said that “you only get out of something what you are prepared to put in”, so I put on some warm clothes and gritted my teeth, as I braved the cold train journey from Eastbourne to the big city lights of London, and specifically the Holland Club within the campus of Imperial College, near to the South Kensington tube station on the District and Circle line.

It’s here, on the first Wednesday of every month, that some of the World’s best underwater photographers meet to share ideas, anecdotes, and socialise in a well-suited subterranean meeting room…

You see, it’s here that the British Society of Underwater Photographers (a.k.a. BSoUP) meets, and in whose esteemed ranks this budding enthusiastic but inexperienced underwater snapper found himself; uncertain whether it would be a roomful of cliquey technical egos, or a group of passionate and friendly divers fascinated in underwater marine flora and fauna, and in capturing their adventures to be enjoyed by those not fortunate enough to be in the water with them.

I’m extremely happy to report it was the latter group, and despite my nerves and inexperience I was welcomed with open arms.

The format of most monthly meetings is for a first half consisting of a guest presentation following by a themed photo competition. The competition topic is known in advance and members can submit their entries. These are shown and the members in attendence vote for their top 3.

After a break to refresh any empty glasses, and for the votes to be counted, the second half starts with the results of the competition and then a second guest speaker.

I’ll write about the speakers in a later post, but the evening finishes around 11pm and I left buzzing about the possibilities.

The only downside to the evening was having to catch the 00:05 train home, which thanks to some midweek overnight engineering works included a bus service from Lewes, which meant my head didn’t hit my pillow until around 2:30am.

Though it didn’t take me long to drift into a dreamy world of colourful fish and photogenic sharks ;-)

Let me know what you think,

Wishing you health, success and happiness in everything you do,

Jon