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

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• The previous article on this course

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 ‘She’ in question is the HMS Resolution (known to have foundered in Pevensey Bay during the Great Storm of 1703), or could it be a Dutch Warship (lost during the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690)…

The mystery deepens…

The story started in April 2005 when 3 local scuba divers were diving to free some snagged lobster pots, stuck in Norman’s Bay.

What they discovered was to change their lives, and is likely to be the topic of many a new chapter in the maritime history books.

Paul Stratford, one of the divers has led the subsequent investigation into this previously undiscovered wreck of a wooden ship surrounded by at least 45 iron guns (cannons).

His unrelenting passion for this has led to him becoming the official licensee for the wreck, as he deals with the many diverse organisations in an attempt to get to the bottom of this fascinating story.

His progress so far is charted on the Resolution Project website which I highly recommend  (it is also featured as a ‘related link’ from this blog’s home page).

For 2007, Paul hopes that a number of interested divers who belong to Planet Divers Dive Club  will go through the appropriate Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) courses to become proficient enough to be allowed to dive on the protected wreck.

This will then be the start of a painstaking underwater survey effort to sift through the evidence and hopefully get to the point of being able to put a proper name to a maritime conundrum.

I for one hope to be one of the lucky divers, and I’ll report back as soon as there is something to tell ;-)

Let me know what you think,

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

Jon