SCUBA May 2026 issue 165 | Page 55

A piece of the Parthenon

Archaeologists have released new findings from the latest phase of underwater excavations at the historic shipwreck of the brig Mentor off the coast of Kythera, Greece. The research, carried out in 2025 by Greece’ s Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, continues efforts to study the vessel closely associated with the controversial removal of antiquities from the Acropolis of Athens in the early 19th century. During the 2025 survey dives, a small marble decorative fragment thought to belong to the ship’ s original cargo was recovered. The piece is a few centimetres in size and features a carved decorative drop. The dimensions correspond to the decorative elements recorded on the Parthenon.

Trawling ban yields results

PHOTO: GREEK MINISTRY OF CULTURE

Totally immersed Paul Cox reports from the Shark Trust stand at Go Diving, where VR headsets allowed visitors an insight into the elasmobranch world

Am I allowed to talk about the dive show in this column? The Go Diving event, at which I met and talked to a LOT of divers, is still buzzing around in my head. Among it all it was great to catch up with Simon, a couple of fellow SCUBA columnists and some of the BSAC team. And, of course, it was a joy to share the shark love far and wide with the visitors to our stand and attendees at my talk.

The activity that really seemed to be a winner for us this year( again) was the 360 VR shark experience. Sure, we’ re not the only ones doing it and maybe it’ ll start to fade in the coming years. But it does feel like a technology that has a huge amount of potential. After many years of being an emerging technology, VR and 360 footage seems to be really taking off. Not least due to the accessibility and popularity of good quality 360 cameras.

It’ s been a truism in the shark world that shark conservation would be a lot easier if only everyone had a chance to experience diving with sharks. Divers get it. There is overwhelming positivity about sharks when you talk to people who have experienced them underwater. But not everyone is able to dive and, if we’ re honest, the world( and our diving trips) wouldn’ t be improved by an exponential increase in the uptake of shark diving.

So, we need other ways to connect more people with sharks. And VR does a pretty good job.

What is so special about VR? Surely it’ s just TV in all directions. Neuroscientists draw a distinction. We’ ve become so familiar with receiving information from flat screens that we almost don’ t notice it at times. Our brains are adept at keeping a mental distance between the content and the surroundings. Video is a passive‘ seeing’ experience. But once you place that headset on, it blocks out the real world and your brain responds. You get a sense of presence, of being‘ in’ the scene rather than just viewing it. It becomes an active experience rather than an observation – something you do rather than something you see. A different part of the brain is activated, the memory becomes stronger and your connection is greater.

It doesn’ t take a PhD in psychology to understand that something is going on. Watching people in headsets, mouths open, reaching out to touch things and talking to themselves, it’ s staring you in the face. Maybe this is( as our catchy promo line says) as close as you can get without getting wet. And maybe this could really make a difference in how people see sharks – through experience. www. sharktrust. org

A Sussex conservation project has welcomed a recovery in its seabeds, five years on from a ban on bottom trawling. The Sussex Kelp Recovery Project( SKRP) is reporting an increase in black sea bream and mussel beds stretching more than a kilometre off Shoreham. SKRP kelp recovery coordinator George Short said the observed mussel beds are important because it was one of the habitats the protection was put in place to recover. Bream had been vulnerable to trawling because they make their nests on the seabed, but video surveys have been detecting an increase in their number. Steve Backshall and other shark enthusiasts try out the VR headset

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