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Righting myself, I dumped air from my buoyancy wings and drysuit and started to sink slowly. As the water closed over my head, I looked around and was surprised at how good the underwater visibility was. After an OK signal with Paul we started the descent down the line in about 20-metre visibility.

My optimism for such good visibility down on the wreck was abruptly smashed at about 40 metres down, when the water started to get rapidly murkier. By 50 metres down it was a silty brown with only about 5 metres visibility. This was most likely the result of the trawling in the channel that had been taking place up-current earlier.

We pressed on down into the gloom, our torches struggling to punch through it. At about 60 metres, the seabed began to materialise a few metres beneath me, at 64 metres. I shone my powerful torch around, up against the gentle current, and there at the limit of my vision was a brooding dark mass that seemed to be ominously rising up above me. Or at least that’s what I thought I was seeing – most divers looking for a wreck in dark conditions are familiar with the feeling of thinking there’s a dark silhouette out there, which recedes as you approach it; it’s just an illusion.