Caught red handed!!

  On the 14th August 2007 at 13.49 hrs, Malta’s latest boat to be scuttled settled to the seabed. The Maltese Naval Patrol boat P29 at 51.9 metres in length was sunk off Cirkewwa near to the earlier scuttled wreck of the tugboat ‘Rozi’ Needless to say – Holiday Diver was there to record the event and dive the wreck (as a World Exclusive) – the full story and pictures will appear in next month’s issue.

However, it seems that certain mindless morons have been in action and within 24 hours of the boat going down – the wreck robbers had been at work! Armed with hammer, chisels and wrenches a number of items have already been removed! Namely: gauges, parts of instrument panels, nuts and bolts together with one of the telephones – all of which had been left in situ by the company Cassar Ship Repairs of Marsa who were responsible for the scuttling under the direction of the Maltese Government.

This so-called moronic behaviour on Malta’s wrecks is not a new phenomenon – but has started to take on an all too familiar trait since – low and behold the Russian/Eastern European infiltration into Malta where – dive centres have been set-up within some of Malta’s premier 4 and 5 star hotels.

Many will remember the scuttling of the patrol tanker ‘Um el Faroud’ in 1998. Nine dock yard workers were horribly killed whilst working on this ship, undertaking a refit. As a mark of respect a plaque in bronze with their names was affixed to the bridge prior to the ship’s scuttling off Wied iz Zurrieq. This has been removed to be subsequently sold via the Internet! Our information alleges that a Russian Diving Centre situated near to Sliema in Malta had carried out this operation. To my mind this is nothing less than ‘grave robbing’! All this was reported to the relevant authorities who – did little if nothing at all. Surprise – surprise!

Since this time all of Malta’s wrecks have been systematically robbed and looted – the items gleaned have been sold via the Internet – and still the Authorities do little!

This situation has just got to STOP! Holiday Diver fully supports the PDSA (Professional Diving Schools association) of Malta in their fight to stop this behaviour by MORONS who call themselves DIVERS. If the Maltese Authorities are loath to act then holiday Diver will, by – in the first instance, advise all our readers to boycott all Russian/Eastern European Diving Centres situated within the Maltese Islands until they are seen to act responsibly. And remember if you see anything suspicious – report the facts to the MALTESE POLICE and the US – noting vehicle registration numbers etc.

Ariel Photos: Major Ivan M. Consiglio, AFM

David Oldale.
Editor in Chief Holiday Diver

The 4m-long juvenile minke whale which swam into Fraserburgh Harbour having, it is thought, followed fishing boats out of curiosity as they returned to port.

Seemingly confused by all the noise of boats moving in and out of the harbour, and its own sonar ricocheting off the harbour’s walls, it could not find its way out again and was stranded for 3 days.

A full day was spent by volunteers including trained marine mammal medics from British Divers Marine Life Rescue, to secure the animal’s passage back out through the harbour mouth, which includes a seabed lip that may have confused the whale further.

In the end, the minke was shepherded to the entrance by an array of strategically positioned craft, from which scaffolding poles were placed in the water and hit to create a hollow, metallic sound, forcing the whale to move away in the required direction.

Since then, the whale has shown no sign of returning and was seen heading east into the North Sea.

The happy ending contrasts with the sad conclusion, in July, of an attempt by BDMLR to save a northern bottlenose whale, near Ipswich, which had swum up the River Orwell.The juvenile whale, about 4.5m long, was humanely destroyed by BDMLR vets after attempts to coax it back into the open sea failed and it became clear that the whale was suffering from dehydration and/or starvation.

To get to the Orwell, the creature would have been well out of its normal cruising area between Iceland or the Faroe Islands.

Several of these whales have appeared off Britain’s East Coast over the past 18 months, and all have perished. A well publicised example was in London’s Thames last January. But others have died at Skegness, in Lincolnshire, and in the Humber, near Hull.  Adult Minke Whale

Dave, the celebrity hawksbill turtle resident of Egypt’s Ras Mohammed, who survived major injury from a boat but never let it affect his friendship with divers, has died.

Dave suffered a nasty cut through the top of his shell and into his back flesh when he got a bit too close to a boat propeller last December.The story of his rescue, patching up and rehabilitation by a dedicated team of dive professionals, marine biologists and others, centred on Sharm El Sheikh’s Red Sea Diving College, was well documented in the diving press.

Dave did remarkably well after his successful release back into the sea about five months ago. The glass fibre patch fitted to his shell seemed to be working, and regular sightings were reported.

A monitoring programme was set up by Red Sea Diving College encouraging divers who came across Dave to submit comments and any photographs, so that his progress could be followed as closely as possible. Sadly, Dave was found dead two days ago he was recovered from the sea and a dissectomy performed.

Red Sea Turtles Project is waiting for the results to understand the cause of death and wishes to thank all those who have rescued, looked after, reported and cared about Dave.

Marine biologists know little about the mating habits of one of nature’s apex predators the well known Great White Shark.

That could all change soon as scientists claim to have discovered a remote spot 1,553 miles west of the Baja Peninsula, in the eastern North Pacific, which could be a mating ground for the Great Whites.

The spot was at first nicknamed the ‘great white cafe’ because they suspected sharks went there to feed.

Scientific studies and the tagging of three Great Whites revealed that the sharks migrated long distances seasonally from the coast of California to Hawaii and to the offshore area.

During the migration they occasionally descended to depths of 1,000 metres or more, possibly to “read” geomagnetic, compass-like information emitted from Earth’s crust. However, at the remote spot, they descended as often as every 10 minutes to depths of 600 metres possibly to ‘sniff’ for mates.

Smells in the ocean are layered horizontally. So if you dump any kind of odorous thing into the ocean –left over food, a dead dog, or a female shark - its smell will end up within a horizontal plane. When the sharks repeatedly dive, they could be passing up and down through these layers sniffing.

Since the late 1960s almost 600 square miles of reef have disappeared yearly. This is double the rate of rainforest loss.

The reefs are disappearing at a rate of one percent per year, a decline that began decades earlier than scientists expected.

Historically, coral cover, a measure of reef health, hovered around 50 %. We have already lost half of the world’s reef-building corals as now, only about 2 % of reefs in the Indo-Pacific have coral cover close to the historical baseline.The Indo-Pacific contains 75 % of the world’s coral reefs and has the highest coral diversity in the world. High coral cover reefs in the Indo-Pacific ocean were common until a few decades ago.Scientists rely on coral cover as a key indicator of reef habitat quantity and quality, similar to measuring an area covered by tree canopy as a gauge of tropical forest loss.