From the Wirral coast, we can reach many ancient wreck sites within minutes. Some examples include the confederate ship Lelia, in just 20 metres of water and slightly further out, the famous City of Brussels. Most of the wrecks visited are in the Nitrox depth, but there are also deeper wrecks requiring helium. A group of our members carry out extensive research on the wrecks of Liverpool bay, including historical background research and survey work. Another group has carried out research on aircraft that have crashed in the mountain lakes of Snowdonia. The MOD has granted a permit to this group to search Llyn Melynllyn for the wreck of a Canberra which crashed into the mountain Foel Grach in 1957.
For over 8 years there has been a growing interest in GUE diving, and our members have gained cave and technical qualifications to support their exploration efforts.
Most of our diving is done on wrecks off the North West coast of Britain, in particular Liverpool Bay, where a silt bottom is the norm. Precision finning and trim have enhanced our diving by preserving the visibility. Being able to manoeuvre in all planes, including moving backwards is a massive advantage, particularly for the photographers amongst us.
The GUE approach to equipment and skills removes the voodoo around ‘Tec’ diving. We now just use the equipment appropriate to the dive. Scooters are often used by junior members to enjoy shallow reefs whilst other ‘recreational’ divers have taken stage cylinders to add safety and bottom time in the 20m range.
With our 20 GUE trained divers, the standardised approach means we are not only intimately familiar with our own set up – no matter what the type of dive – we are also utterly familiar with rest of the teams as it is identical to ours! This significantly lowers stress in challenging conditions. The advantages of the standardised equipment configuration were exemplified this summer when 6 members of MUE spent a week with the Red Sea Explorers onboard the MV Tala. During the trip they were able to enjoy dives in the 6m-86m range, simply by adding or taking away some equipment yet not making any changes to the core set up or procedures.
Perhaps most importantly of all, the GUE team approach to diving has radically changed the way we dive. With three-diver teams becoming common, all trained in the same techniques and method, even the most challenging outing has become significantly less stressful. This is allowing us to push our diving around the Isle of Anglesey (another of our main hunting grounds) and explore some of the fantastic wartime wrecks there.