The Isle of Man’s oldest scuba-diving club has been awarded a lottery grant to enable it to train more new divers – and, it hopes, lower the age range of its intake.
“It would be great to see more young people wanting to learn to dive,” says club chair Leigh Morris, who wrote the funding application that has just been approved by the Manx Lottery Trust.
The Isle of Man Sub-Aqua Club (IOMSAC), now in its 66th year, was awarded £2,500 by the trust to enable it to offer free pool training to eight young people over the next two winters.
“We aim to train young people to achieve Ocean Diver qualification, and we have two trainees that have just commenced,” Morris told Divernet. The extra cash will cover the costs of supplying dive-gear in a suitable range of sizes as well as hiring pool facilities for the extra sessions.
IOMSAC is also one of the oldest British Sub-Aqua Club branches (BSAC 76), having been started in 1959 by staff at the now-closed Port Erin Marine Field Research Station. The Isle of Man is a UK Crown Dependency and “the only whole nation in the world that is a UNESCO Biosphere”, says Morris.
The club has some 50 members, including about a dozen trainees at present. It dives most weeks, weather depending, and has two RIBs, kept on different sides of the island for flexibility, though members can also make use of the hardboat run by the Isle of Man’s only dive-shop Discover Diving.
Pool training is carried out at King William’s College and open-water training mainly from Port Erin jetty,
Morris works for Manx Wildlife Trust, as does club secretary Dr Lara Howe, the trust's marine officer and IoM Seasearch co-ordinator, while dive officer John Kermode is a BSAC National Instructor.
Apart from the sort of marine life attractions indicated by the island's UNESCO Biosphere status, the club has access to shipwrecks at a range of depths and owns what it describes as “one of the most historic wrecks in the British Isles” – HM Sloop Racehorse, which sank in 1822 and was rediscovered by the club exactly 200 years later.
Three cannon were discovered on the wreck last year. “We dive the site regularly and are finding new artefacts on every dive,” says Morris. The next project for this proactive club, in response to an outside request, is to concentrate dives around Douglas Lighthouse in search of its lost historic lamp-gear.
Also on Divernet: Wreck Tour 78: The Liverpool, Wreck Tour 84: The Ringwall, Wreck Tour 107: The Thracian, Wreck Tour 59: Fenella Ann
