The organisation responsible for installing moorings for dive boat around the Red Sea’s Thistlegorm wreck has thanked the boats and divers now using the system as required - but has issued an ultimatum to those who are not.
The Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association (HEPCA) said that it is “delighted that so many of you are using the new system and that this action is directly contributing to prolonging the life of this wreck”.But it added: “We are disappointed by reports that some safari boats and dive guides continue to moor on the wreck itself.”HEPCA stated that, while such practice already committed would be disregarded as “due to a lack of awareness and knowledge”, it will now take action against those who drop shots into the 126m-long WWII freighter, which lies in 31m of water with first diving touch-down at about 15m.“Following the installation of the new mooring system, mooring on the wreck is strictly forbidden and violators will be prosecuted,” it said.
The mooring system consists of 32 mooring lines - 16 down each side of the ship, anchored in pairs and running along the seabed parallel with the ship’s sides, about 5m off. However, the buoys are not at the surface but at a depth of 22m, as it “is not possible at this location for the mooring ropes to reach any further to the surface without compromising safety”.
Some skippers have been tempted to drop in a shot rather than send a guide down to find and secure to a mooring line.
Requiring divers to swim across 5m of open water between the wreck and a mooring line, which doubles as a shotline once a boat is tied to it, may also be an issue. HEPCA’s view is that “any diver who cannot swim 5m from the rope to the wreck in a current should not be diving on this wreck”.
Where moorings had been used, said HEPCA, some had “already been cut and damaged due to misuse”. Reiterating its request for diving visitors to use and respect the installation, it said the mooring system was preferable to a wreck management plan, which it had opposed.
This would have been the alternative brought in by the Egyptian Government, with “a substantial increase in fees and dramatic limitations on diver numbers”.
In pushing for a moorings system, HEPCA had “trusted in the conscience and commitment of all
Three wrecks all WW2 German U-boats, from a flotilla known as “Hitler’s lost fleet”, have been discovered in the Black Sea.
The wrecks were located by Turkish expert Selcuk Kolay, using German wartime archives and communication with survivors to establish where he might find the sunken U-boats of Germany’s 30th Flotilla.
One of the subs, two miles offshore and lying in 24m has been dived by Kolay and his team, and confirmed as the wreck of U20.
The two other sites, clearly submarines from survey images, are expected to be U23, lying three miles off Agva in 50m of water, and U19, lying very deep at 500m, three miles off Zonguldak. Kolay hopes to dive the shallower wreck in the spring.
Six submarines of the 30th Flotilla were transported some 2000 miles by river and, partially dismantled, by road from Kiel to the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta, to prey on Russian shipping.
From 1942, the U-boats wreaked havoc, sinking many ships but losing half of their own number to Russian defences. U19, U20 and U23 were the Flotilla’s three remaining subs when, in August 1944, Romania changed its allegiance and joined the Allies, and declared war on Germany.
The submarines could not get out through the Dardanelles or the Bosphorus, due to Turkey’s neutrality. The crews had no choice but to scuttle their vessels, and attempt to make their way back to Germany overland. They were all captured and interned by the Turkish military.
Undamaged due to the nature of their sinking, the U-boats promise to be well-preserved examples of their genre. The was no loss of life, therefore there will be no moral question over any decision to enter the wrecks.
If an ROV exploration package ever comes to fruition, even the deepest wreck should be penetrable by cable-camera, as its scuttling will have meant that it sank with all hatches open.
Selcuk Kolay presents an account of the project’s achievements so far at this Saturday’s International Shipwreck Conference, in Plymouth, Devon.