The SAMPHIRE team ran a stall at Lochaline Dive Centre all day yesterday meeting various dive groups passing through as well as locals from the wider area. We’ve been passing out flyers and giving short talks on the project as well as showing videos of some of the marine archaeological projects we’ve been involved with. Lochaline Dive Centre is run by Mark and Annabel Lawrence, both of whom have spent many years working as marine archaeologists and who have done a great deal of work recording the wrecks in the local area and running field schools with the Nautical Archaeology Society. We are delighted to have them as project partners and will be returning to the centre to work with local divers they know to investigate some of the new sites we have had reported. This will include some volunteering from technical divers who will be helping us to verify the location and nature of wrecks at between 50 and 100 metres depth.

John McCarthy speaking to Buxton Dive Club.

Some of the local residents came down to pass on some of their expertise on local wrecks. Highlights included visits from Oban Times columnist and former National Geographic photographer Iain Thornber who came to tell us about an ships engine he had spotted on a drying rock and soon afterwards Alastair Scoular, local resident and former WWII air corps cadet who came to pass on some of his knowledge on flying boats, helping us to analyse some of the data we have on the flying boats in the Firth of Lorn.

Local resident and flying boat expert Alastair Scouler looking at the details of a sidescan survey of a flying boat and helping SAMPHIRE archaeologist Andrew Roberts to interpret the data.

This event marks the end of the Community Outreach element of the 2014 SAMPHIRE programme for the year. We will now head back to the office and crunch through all the info on local wrecks we’ve been given and start to gear up for the diving in July.