FEATURES Swimming round the undersea Lermontov

Press, 15 May 1987, Page 17

FEATURES Swimming round the undersea Lermontov

After spending more than a year lying on her side in the mud at Port Gore in the Marlborough Sounds, the massive " wreck of the Mikhail Lermontov has become a Mecca for wreck diving enthusiasts. The Marlborough Harbour Board has lifted access restrictions which had prevented any x vessels from entering the area round the wreck. Now anyone may dive freely round the outside of the Lermontov, but the ship is still the property of the ; Baltic Shipping Company. Entering it or removing any “souvenirs” is forbidden.

Many boat owners, with both commercial passenger vessels and their own private boats, have now visited the wreck.

A. Wellington firm, Divers’ World, now takes visitors down

By

JILLIAN SMITH

Photographs by Chris Thornley and John Hagen

to the Lermontov, a ship the firm’s owners already know well. The firm supplied divers and a diving tender, Little Mermaid, during the oil-salvage operations shortly after the Lermontov sank. The Mermaid was in Port Gore from March, 1986, until the salvage finished in June.

Divers’, World took its first group of "tourist divers” to the wreck only this month. Regular trips are being organised. Divers’ World arranges for divers to be flown from Wellington to the airstrip at Port Gore. They are transferred out to the

Little Mermaid, moored above the Lermontov. Divers stay on board the Mermaid all week-end, going down to the wreck each day. Trevor Davies, a Wellington diver. says the trip is “the experience "of a lifetime.” A sport diver for about 15 years, he has visited submerged wrecks before, mostly round the New Zealand coastline. He also dived on the' wreck of the President Coolidge, off the coast of Vanuatu. No trip so far compares with seeing the Lermontov, he says. “The boat is immense — you could never get bored with it. It is such a new wreck. The paint is still there, ropes still hanging there. Nothing is decayed to the point of not being able to recognise it” “I found it hard to relate

pictures of the ship to actually seeing it on the first dive,” says Diana Watt, of Wellington. “It was very strange to see such a massive ship lying on the bottom.” Malcolm Blair, owner of Divers’ World, hopes to leave the Little Mermaid at Port Gore until at least the end of next summer. He has been negotiating with the Baltic Shipping Company to buy the wreck so he can organise guided tours of areas inside the

ship. He says that some of the interior could be cleaned out for easier access and visibility. Other areas could be illuminated. Diving guides familldr with the Lermontov’s layout could be on hand to ensure visitors see as much of the ship as possible in safety. Spare scuba tanks would be left at Intervals for emergency use. Safety swim lines would guide divers in and out of the hull. S !

The Little Mermaid also has its own recompression chamber for emergency use. Malcolm Blair has told the Baltic Shipping Company that nothing will be removed from the ship and divers will not enter. But other divers have apparently disobeyed the rules. Blair says that windows along the side of the wreck have been smashed. He says it is “manmade, deliberate damage.” He was a diver working on the

Lermontov during the oil salvage. When salvage divers finished work in June there were only three broken windows, he says. "Now there are more like 20 or 30.” .

A spokesman for the ship’s agents, Geo. H. Scales, Ltd. Wellington, says entry may have been gained to the ship. Having the Little Mermaid on site may be the best way to deter souvenir hunters, says Captain Alexandr Nlkolin, the Baltic

Shipping Company's New Ze* land representative. y. . “We believe it is very dangerous to dive Inside the Lermontov; but we are well aware that some people have tried to get some small or not so small things off,” he says. Captain Nikolin says that guided tours of the wreck might be the best way to ensure some control until agreement can be reached between his Leningrad company and Divers’ World.