Volunteer scuba divers with the Sussex Underwater charity have helped to install what is described as the county’s first underwater marine-life habitat.
Dubbed the “Minter Hotel” after Shoreham fisherman Alan Minter, who came up with the idea, the habitat has just started attracting marine life off the coast at Lancing.
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After what Minter describes as a frustrating two-year struggle to obtain all the necessary licensing, the 3.2-tonne structure was finally placed on the seabed on 22 May, his 67th birthday. It contains 19 crevices designed to shelter crustaceans, and other features to attract egg-laying sea life.
Minter dedicated the project to his grandfather, who had kept his boat on the nearby beach a century earlier.
“We are just trying to put something back,” he told Sussex World. “It looks very promising. We all know the state of the sea – you’ve lost the beach, the sand, the inshore reef. You’ve lost everything due to climate change, dredging, pollution. It’s like the perfect storm for nature.
“There’s no helping hand under the sea because nobody sees it. Nature is really struggling to hang in there and survive. We’re just trying to help it along a little bit.”
Under the eye of scientist Ray Ward the Sussex Underwater project divers will monitor the Minter Hotel’s colonisation process and plan to install a camera at the site to enable live-streaming to schools, in line with the community group’s educational mission.
The hope is that companies will step up to sponsor further Minter Hotels, until a colony of at least 10 has been established.
Sussex Underwater was co-founded by local scuba diver and conservationist Eric Smith, who led a successful campaign to get trawlers banned in Sussex Bay, as shown in a 2023 BBC documentary Our Lives: Our Sea Forest.
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