ENVIRONMENT

Three ‘ exceptionally rare ’ shipwrecks off the Dorset Coast and the Isle of Wight have been granted the highest level of protection on the advice of Historic England .

The 13th century Mortar Wreck , discovered off the Dorset coast with its cargo of gothic Purbeck stone gravestones , is now the oldest known protected wreck in English waters , with timbers dating from 1242-1265 , during the reign of King Henry III .

Finds recovered from the Mortar Wreck includes two Purbeck stone gravestone slabs from Dorset , with two different gothic designs . They are in immaculate condition and the chisel marks

can still be seen . Similar gravestones are found in church graveyards across the South Coast . They are significant because they were pre-carved and are not blank slabs , suggesting a demand for highly skilled stonemasons and their products .

Other finds include a large cauldron for cooking soup , a smaller cauldron , which would have once had a long handle for heating water and mugs covered in marine concretion .

The gravestone slabs would have either been carved at the quarries or at a workshop and are unpolished . One of the slabs features a wheel headed cross , an

early 13th Century style , while the other depicts a splayed arm cross , common in the mid-13th century . Several Purbeck stone mortars used by millers to grind grains into flour have also been recovered .

The 16th and 17th century Shingles Bank Wreck sites ( designated as NW96and NW68 ) off the Isle of Wight have revealed cannons and lead ingots and have shed more light on trading at the time . The NW68 wreck may have been associated with the Battle of Portland in 1653 , when the fleet of the Commonwealth of England was attacked by the Dutch Republic during the First Anglo-Dutch War ( 1652-1654 ). Wreck site NW96 is believed to be the remains of an armed merchant ship .

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PHOTO : MARINE DYNAMICS

A pair of orcas have been systematically killing great white sharks off the coast of South Africa , causing great whites to abandon the area .

Since 2017 , eight great white shark carcasses have washed up along the Western Cape . Seven of them were missing livers . Scientists have attributed the killings to two male orcas , named Port and Starboard after the direction of their collapsed dorsal fins , and conclude that the carcasses represent just a fraction of the body count .

The recent arrival of the orcas , followed by the sudden decline in sharks , suggests that white sharks respond rapidly to risk from a ‘ novel ’ predator , according to the study , published in the African Journal of Marine Science .

Although orcas have previously been recorded off South Africa , there has been