Wreck of the Lusitania

[Pat]

The last couple of weeks I've been watching 'Treasure Quest' on Discovery. Its a series about the exploits of Odyssey Marine Exploration, a company who, in their own words, are '...dedicated specifically to deep ocean shipwreck exploration and archaelogy.' Most of the series concentrates on their exploration of wrecks in the English Channel and, there has been a furore since their discovery of HMS Victory two months ago. However, last night's program was very interesting as they concentrated their efforts on the wreck of the Lusitania. In conjunction with the wreck's owner, Gregg Bemis, they did a week long dive on the wreck in the summer of 2008. From an angling perspective what was both interesting and disturbing was that the wreck was completely draped in nets, so much so that the team nearly lost their ROV in one of them. One of the nets they reckoned had only been lost on the wreck the week before. Despite that, there appeared to be a huge stock of pollack and coalfish on the wreck. Unfortunately, the nets are probably making angling nigh on impossible . (The show is to be repeated during the week).

[The Austrian]

Unfortunately, the nets are probably making angling nigh on impossible

...and not to mention all the sealife dying a needless and cruel death tangled up in these "lovely" nets

[Pat]

Funny enough, despite the wreck being almost curtained in nets, there didn't appear to be any fish caught up in the them and the countless fish milling about seemed to be quite able to negotiate their way around the nets . I was surprised.

[jw]

Hi Pat,

i saw that program as well, very interesting. The nets did not seem to be ghost fishing, a kind of marine gunk
seemed to coat the mono making it too visible to trap any fish

[Pat]

Hi John,

What's even more interesting was the size of the fish. Some of them were the length of the lettering on the ship's hull. As big as some of the 'biggies' (or even bigger) that we had on our recent wrecking trip.