Fathoms Free is a group of volunteer divers who protect marine wildlife and the environment for everyone's benefit by removing ALDFG (abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gear) and other marine debris from the coastal waters of Cornwall and Devon. ALDFG is also known as ghost gear or ghost fishing gear, as it continues to "fish," entangling, trapping, and killing wildlife indiscriminately. These trapped animals will die and act as bait, attracting more wildlife in a vicious cycle of death until the ghost gear is removed from the environment.
Fathoms Free wants to revive and restore the Cornish dive boat Stingray to its former glory to increase Cornwall's capacity for marine conservation and continue Mark Milburn's legacy. We want a boat that allows us to clear more ghost gear and marine debris than ever before. Restoring Stingray will also enable us to provide other local marine organisations with a larger, faster boat, which, along with our volunteer skippers, will increase their marine conservation activities and facilitate greater community involvement.
Given the boat and trailer's current condition, we've estimated it will take over £10,000 to get it back in the water and up to the required standard. This estimate could quickly increase to £15,000 or even £20,000 if we can't get the engine running reliably and have to source a replacement or buy a new trailer. The hull needs repairing, the trailer ideally needs replacing, and the 200HP Mercury Optimax engine doesn't start. The boat has no electronics, navigation equipment, or safety equipment. It's a bare hull with tubes. We plan on doing all the work ourselves to keep the project costs to a minimum. Despite these costs and the work involved, there wasn't a better fit than Stingray for various reasons, which you'll learn about below in Stingray's Story.
To help us achieve potential match funding, we've set our target at £5,000, hoping that we will get match funding to take us to our estimated minimum requirement of £10,000.
Stingray's Story
Stingray was designed from the outset as a fast dive boat and bought from Barnet Marine a couple of years before the turn of the century by Looe Divers, aptly named Looe Diver 1. Our trustee, treasurer, and highest-qualified skipper, Julian, was a regular skipper on it between 2000 and 2005, including for the sinking of the Scylla in 2004. During that time, Julian progressed his skippering development with the boat, completing the Advanced Powerboat and Instructor courses.
Approximately a decade after Looe Divers purchased the boat, they sold it to Starfish Divers, and it was renamed Starfish. Unfortunately, Starfish Divers ceased trading a few years later. The boat was neglected, and its condition declined. We're not sure what happened to it in the following few years before it was found and purchased by Mark Milburn in 2015 as a project to restore. Due to Mark's various other projects and lack of spare time to complete the work required, Starfish remained neglected until COVID-19 gave Mark free time to start looking at her. Up until this time, other than an unsuitable replacement aluminium framed trailer that needed refurbishing and a replacement second-hand engine that no one had seen running, there was no other progress toward getting the boat seaworthy.
Following a jet wash, removing and selling the faulty engine, and stripping the boat back to its bare hull, the first step was to have her re-tubed, which took place in July 2022. It was at this time, Starfish took on the new name Stingray, named after Mark's first charter boat, which had been the foundation of his dive charter business, Stingray Charters. Sadly, Mark passed away the following year, and the incomplete boat, Stingray, was neglected once more.
Mark wasn't just a scuba diving school, dive shop, and dive charter operator; he was a stalwart in Cornwall's marine conservation efforts for decades until his passing. Mark supported all the marine conservation groups in and around Cornwall with his business and led his own ghost gear recoveries and underwater cleans-ups in Cornwall decades before some groups even existed. You would often hear of Mark giving preferential rates to marine conservation groups to ensure they could impact as much as possible on the limited budgets we all operated on.
Fathoms Free was, in fact, Mark's last dive charter customer before his passing. We spent an entire Sunday with Mark clearing a wreck of ghost gear and marine debris in the Falmouth estuary, a memory we'll cherish forever.
When we learned that Stingray was sitting in a hedge just a mile from Mark's former dive centre, we knew we had found the perfect opportunity to expand Cornwall's capacity for marine conservation and honour Mark's legacy. After speaking with his family, we purchased the boat to continue the work he had started.
With your help, we can honour Mark Milburn's legacy and ensure that the Stingray name continues to significantly impact marine conservation for years.
No matter how small, every donation brings us closer to our goal.