Christmas Day dive little more than chance to explore
SEVERAL people took the once-a-year opportunity to go diving in St Peter Port Harbour on Christmas Day.
Accountant, Roman Brewer-Marchant, 21, was taking part for the second year in a row, having taken up diving 18 months ago.
‘I did about 20 dives in 2020 but about 50 to 60 this year,’ he said.
‘We tend to dive in the same places all-year round so this is somewhere different.’
Mr Brewer-Marchant said he was just really exploring.
‘It’s pretty sandy down there with patches of eel grasses, stones, crabs, fish and a lot of scallops,’ he said.
‘I think I saw a wreck down there, but there’s not much of it left now.’
People were permitted to dive between the pier heads and a line drawn between the old lifeboat slipway and the turning dolphin on the New Jetty. Commercial berths to the east of the New Jetty were out of bounds. For safety reasons, all had to work as part of an organised group.
Another man, who did not wish to be named, said larger vessels had created a hollow in one area of the sea bed which had resulted in a mound coming up alongside it.
The dive coincided with a high tide of 7.9m
‘I was under for 27 minutes and got down to 17.1m,’ he said. ‘That was in the bottom of the hollow so that’s about as far as you could go.’
The Christmas Day dive was as much a social thing as anything and a bit of tradition, he said.
‘I got about three dozen scallops. That’s enough as I don’t like them myself so I’ll give them to friends and family who do.’
The harbour was never particularly clear to dive in, he said.
‘It can get murky very quickly down there if you disturb anything but then it settles down again very quickly too.’
Hugely important find made in 1982
BRITAIN’S largest Roman object was discovered during the Christmas Day harbour dive in 1982.
Diver and fisherman Richard Keen found the remains of a Romano-Celtic trading vessel, later named Asterix, which caught fire and sank in St Peter Port harbour in about AD 280.
The original ship was about 22-25 metres long, of which some 17 metres of its lower part remain.
It is the only sea-going Roman ship to survive outside the Mediterranean, other than fragments. Its discovery led to the formation of the Guernsey Maritime Trust.
It was raised between 1984 and 1986 and the Mary Rose Trust carried out preservation work between 1999 and 2014.
The main timbers are currently on display in the grounds of the Guernsey Pearl and can be seen through a viewing window.
There is also a small display that explains more about the ship, how it was built and how it came to sink off Guernsey.
