CORNWALL, UK (27 Mar 2004) -- A grey ship on a calm grey sea against a grey sky would not ordinarily attract much attention. The monochrome setting off south-east Cornwall, however, was deceptive camouflaging as it hid one of the most historic and unusual maritime events to take place in UK waters: the creation of Europe's first artificial reef. The agent of this was HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander class frigate. She is, or rather was, a big ship, weighing in at 2,500 tons and 272 feet in length. Once she was one of the prides of the Royal Navy, seeing action in the cod wars of the 1970s and later serving in the Falklands. On Saturday she looked stark and rather sad as she stood in the middle of an exclusion zone held at station by two tugs in Whitsand Bay near Plymouth. Stripped of her mast, she looked every inch the ghost ship. Around her a considerable crowd had gathered to bid farewell, including a flotilla of 200 ships. When the tugs pulled away a flare went up and then David Bellamy, the conservationist and a passionate diver, pressed the detonator box. It ignited the 50 packs of explosives that took the frigate to the seabed. There were four explosions, each louder than the last, making for an impressive pyrotechnic display. Within one minute Scylla's bow started to tip, then she lurched on to her side and slipped quickly under the sea, her helm the last to disappear. Scylla will prove of great interest to the diving community. She has been purposely placed in at a good recreational scuba depth of 25m and will offer four decks for divers to explore, including the captain's cabin. Divers will not be alone, for the wreck will quickly become a haven for marine life, and the colonisation process forms an important part of the remit for depositing the frigate on the seabed. Scientists believe that eels and the more curious fish will arrive almost immediately. John Dory, mackerel and dead men's fingers are likely to make a new home of her. The ship will be visited too by passing triggerfish and sunfish, and these may attract the porbeagle shark. "It will be like a soap opera,'' said Kelvin Boot of the National Marine Aquarium which is supervising the creation of the reef. | | HMS Scylla "There will be the initial characters, some of whom will stay for good while others move. We expect to see an increase in a number of species showing interest within 24 hours of the ship hitting the bottom. Within two or three years it will look like a respectable wreck. This will help us to understand how a ship can increase the local biodiversity. Plymouth is the UK's centre for marine biology and the scientific community will conduct all kinds of experiments to study the colonisation process.'' The ship's fate met with the approval of her last captain, Mike Booth, who watched her final moments. "It's unusual,'' he said. "When a ship reaches the end of its service you either sell her or cut her up for scrap. This is giving her a longevity and is rather a nice way to put a ship to rest.'' SOURCE - Independent |
