DATELINE: 30th November 2000

WRECK-DIVING CLUB RENOUNCES LUMPHAMMER CULTURE
In what many will hope is a sign of things to come, a BSAC club known for wrecking activities has publicly announced that its days of indiscriminate salvage are over.
The BSAC's Aylesbury branch in Buckinghamshire is about as far from the sea as any club in the land, but down the years its members have dived on wrecks from Scotland to Cornwall and, after wielding hammer and chisel, come back heavier than they went down.
"We've not acted illegally, in that we've stayed clear of protected or military wrecks and, when we have taken items from freely accessible sites, we've always reported them to the Receiver of Wreck," says Paul Blissendon, the club's Training Officer. "But it would be true to say that items were often raised when there was no real need, bar a person's desire to secure a memento."
Now, impressed by the joint Respect Our Wrecks initiative endorsed by the big training agencies, Receiver, MoD and archaeologists, members have changed their attitude.
"It's dawning that, if we're to have anything worthwhile to enjoy in the future, we've got to act responsibly now," says Blissendon, who first raised the issue at a branch committee meeting. "They seemed receptive to what I was saying."
The way in which a new approach was then fostered throughout the club appears to have been a classic example of the power of creeping peer pressure, which is cited by those behind Respect Our Wrecks as probably the most effective way in which divers will regulate themselves.
"We have about 60 members and, a few years ago, I'd say at least a quarter of them were raising items from the seabed. But many were swayable and recently we were down to about six who you might call more hardcore," says Blissendon.
But even those divers are now reconsidering. "Two or three are coming round to the conservation view - and one, who was a particularly active wrecker, is now doing a Nautical Archaeology Society course.
"A couple, however, have left the club because they don't want to change - but that's the point; that peer pressure was sufficient for them to feel that if they wish to continue with regular wrecking, they should go elsewhere."
Aylesbury's experience has left Blissendon convinced that, although many British club divers still retrieve finds from the sea, the great majority are indeed "swayable".
"When there were more in the club wrecking, those with pangs of conscience would often stay quiet. But as they become the majority, they open their mouths more and suddenly the concept of wrecking as being antisocial gathers pace."

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