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			RDF RDF				The real dive story from Jason Gibb's logbook. Dive 1 Aim: Explore the numerous wrecks Dive time: 10 minutes Max depth: 11m Seabed: Mud, sand Weather: Westerly 2-3, Sunny Boat HQ: ScubaCat Sea temp: 15oC Dive details: Attempting marine archaeology in a shipping lane is like trying to do land archaeology in the middle of the M25! As soon as the ferry left port we raced out to the site at the mouth of the harbour and moored up the ScubaCat. Richard Keen, the salty seadog who found the wrecks, has got his system down to a tee. Miranda and I dived with archaeologist Jon Adams, who is a very knowledgeable chap and a good diver too. On the site it was amazing to see the damage that the ferries' propellers do – there were bits of pottery, wood and artefacts scattered everywhere. We swam along the hull of a 13th century Portuguese ship. It was extraordinary diving on a ship three quarters of a millennium old! Dive supervisor Dave was getting itchy about the ferries and then he got radioed that the French ferry was coming in early. He got us up sharpish, and then we had to drop our mooring and race over to the quayside. This is going to make our lives really difficult! And why did we decide to do this in the busiest summer months of the year! Dive 2 Aim: Look at the pottery Dive conditions: As previous dive Dive time: 90 minutes Max depth: 12m Dive details: The site is covered with fragments of pottery, 750-year-old pottery at that! Duncan, our medieval pottery expert, watched the pictures I was taking through our hard-wired system. He was real tired when he arrived this morning, and didn't say much, but as soon as he saw the pottery he lit up. He spotted some Portuguese pottery, supporting the fact that site B is a Portuguese ship. Feel like we accomplished a lot and beginning to get a sense of the layout of the site (which is big!). Dive 3 Aim: Film reconstruction of Richard Keen finding wrecks Dive conditions: As previous dive Dive time: 23 minutes Max depth: 11m Dive details: Richard took me out on his scallop fishing boat. We chucked on a couple of tanks and jumped overboard. He didn't hang about, and I think he was testing what this 'media' diver was made of (he's a hardy fisherman, who feels as at home in the water as I do in an editing suite!). I got him to do a reconstruction of scallop fishing (that's how he found the wrecks). He was amazing, plucking scallops out of the sand as easily as apples off a tree. Dive 4 Aim: Night dive to collect wood samples Dive conditions: As previous dive Dive time: 70 minutes Max depth: 11.3m Dive details: The ferries don't run at night, so that was the best time to dive. Night dives are great. Your eyes are focused on what's lit up by the dive torch and you see much more. Our mission was to get wood samples for our dendrochronologist. Jon and Miranda did a great job, getting several samples from different sites. Dive 5 Aim: Final dive – find evidence that the ships were lost to French attack Dive conditions: As previous dive Dive time: 50 minutes Max depth: 11.3m Dive details: All the clues have been a bit vague and we need concrete evidence of what these ships were doing here. We went in search of burnt wood as evidence of fire, but found none. We found football-sized ballast stones at site D that suggested that this ship wasn't carrying a cargo. It's hard to make a guess at events several hundred years ago, but I'm sure conclusions will be drawn. I'm off to catch the ferry home. ^ Top