Under the guise of sustaining clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas, the MMO has required contractors to pay for and wait up to three months for over 2584 ludicrously unnecessary licences since November 2009, allegedly. Do the words “wasteful red tape, unnecessary bureaucracy and incompetence” spring to mind?

100 years ago

On 6 February 1915, the salvage vessel Salvor No1 was driven ashore and wrecked in South Bay, near Peterhead, Scotland, in heavy weather. It was an ex-Royal Navy gunboat (possibly HMS Pickle or Bulldog) that the Admiralty had converted for salvage work of the Admiralty Salvage Unit due to the heavy losses of ships by enemy action.

150 years ago

The inventor and founder of India rubber manufacturing, Thomas Hancock, died at Stoke Newington, London, on 26 March 1865. He had worked closely with Charles Macintosh to produce waterproof ‘Macintosh’ material which was quickly incorporated in diving dress manufacture as early as 1830.