Читать книгу Into the Abyss. Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World онлайн

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We kicked our fins and careered down the slope towards the wreck, which was clearly of a sizeable vessel and was sitting on an even keel. Its side seemed to rise upwards for about 5 metres.

As we arrived at the bottom of the keel, I found that where the hull ran underneath the vessel towards the keel, there was a small gap between it and the seabed, similar to the barge we had dived earlier. All manner of startled sea creatures peered out at us, unusual intruders to their realm.

In this horizontal crevasse a confusion of sea life tried to eke out some security under the solid hull of the ship. Here and there an odd eel-like, sand coloured fish with a hook of skin beneath its bottom lip tucked itself away - ling. A few conger eels were also dotted about amongst less threatening edible crabs, lobsters and the smaller squat lobsters.

We seemed to have arrived near one end of the vessel and we swum quickly towards the very end of the hull to see whether this was the bow or stern. There was no sign of a propeller so I assumed we were at the bow. The steel hull itself was very box like, well corroded and covered in marine growth. The vessel had been down here a long time.