JOTTINGS The Editor’s bit

Hi, a belated Happy New Year and welcome to the latest WB.

It's good to see so much happening in the Club during what is usually a bit of a quiet period. There's lots of planning for this year's trips going on, and up at the garage members have been busy having a bit of a grand clear out. I'm sure Warren and everyone else involved would like it kept as clean and tidy as it is at the moment!

On a personal note I am determined to get some diving in this year, although any trips may well have to wait until after mid June and the end of the university year.

You may have already spotted that we have a surprise contributor in this issue; our old friend Hervé Deschamps. Although I went on several trips with Hervé, I don't recall ever diving with him. I do however remember one very pleasant afternoon at Kimmeridge when we both decided to give the dive a miss and, having messed around on the beach, headed for the tea shop in the village. Hervé has asked me to say hello pass on his good wishes to everyone. If you would like to contact him, see page 13.

What's Bubbling

Having made a bit of a splash with lots of colour in the last issue, the bad news is that I'm no longer easily able to print stacks of colour pages at work. So, it's going to be back to good ol' black and white (unless anyone else does the honours).

All that is quite a shame having just made it as Dive Magazine's 'Newsletter of the Month' for November. Did you spot that in the same issue we were also one of the branches highlighted in the Try Dive write-up.

Local Press and Publicity

Locally we managed to get a mention of our forthcoming Experience Scuba course and the Leisure Centre Open Day in the Advertiser two weeks running (and also in the Daventry Express).

Publicity is very important, so if you have any contacts or know somewhere else we can get our name mentioned, let me know. Other than the Experience Scuba courses we don't get in the papers much. I know it's not as easy as most sports where you have match reports and the like, but there must be some 'newsy' things we can let them know about. If you have some photos, even better. Again, let me know.

Wreck Diving

Well, this really has become something of a hot topic.

The current debate is covered in depth elsewhere in this issue, where I've reproduced some of the articles from the Western Daily Press.

While most definitely not agreeing with the knee-jerk reaction that is going on (law made in such circumstances invariably seems to be ill thought out), is it such a bad thing that things have come to a head?

While completely agreeing that these divers who are showing no respect for underwater graves are a minority, they are too big a minority for my liking. We seem to hear more and more stories of divers trying to force their way into these sites. The M2, grave to over 60 submariners is a typical example. For years there wasn't a problem, but there are now clear signs of people trying to force their way in. Next they'll be trying to strip it.

For me, the problem goes deeper than graves. How many times have you seen divers taking from wrecks? Remember that most belong to someone - and that someone is not you. I'm sorry , but some divers are vandals (although not a problem Rugby Divers has - as far as I know). I can recall seeing a group of holidaying Royal Navy divers (of all people) trying to hack lumps out of canons on the site of an 18th century Royal Navy wreck. There seems to be a growing number of divers who consider that such behaviour is acceptable.

Most divers, me included, have tended to turn a blind eye to much of what has been going on. Divers and their governing bodies have shown a total inability to control and enforce decent practice, so why should we be so surprised if someone else takes charge for us?

I most certainly urge you to write to your MP in support of us continuing being able to dive wrecks. The last thing we need is OfDive, OfWreck (or whatever) monitoring all dive boats or doing spot searches.

However, is arguing for the status quo enough? I think we need to put our own house in order. If you write, please add in some constructive comment about how this could be done.

I would stress that these are my personal views. Please feel free to disagree. WB would love to hear from you!

Trips

Having got that little lot off my chest, please support all the Club's trips this summer. There are still plenty of gaps in the calendar and Fletch is always looking for new organisers, so if there's nothing planned for your favourite location, why not do something about it?

Newsletter Contributions

Keep those contributions coming. Trip reports, letters, photos, whatever, they can all be used! All contributions to me please, preferably by e-mail or on disk, but I still take that old fashioned stuff called paper too!

And Finally ...

Happy diving and here's to a good year (and some decent weather).

May you bubbles ever upwards go.

Dave