Solent Marine Heritage Assets

Defining, investigating, monitoring and reporting: 2008 - 2011

This project will enable the HWTMA to work together with English Heritage provide locally based targeting of investigation, monitoring and reporting on a range of marine heritage assets in the Solent and Sea Wight area.

The project will support:

  • Work on Solent Designated Historic Wreck Sites
  • Investigation and monitoring on non-designated wreck sites
  • Investigation and monitoring of non-wreck sites

The project will take a regional approach to protected wreck sites within the Solent region to help support the work of licensees and increase capacity to respond to management issues and challenges. This project will allow for the monitoring of these sites to help feed into management requirements, and this will include the assessment of the level of risk which the sites face. The protected wreck sites to be included in the project in 2009 are the Needles, Yarmouth Roads and HMS Invincible.

In addition to the protected wreck sites there are also a wealth of other wreck sites in the Solent and Sea Wight areas. There are a number of sites which the HWTMA have had reported to them (often by local sports divers) which require inspection, or that have been dived on to gather basic data but require further work. Such sites will be targeted and we will use data already gathered by the HWTMA and support further data gathering and reporting to aid long-term management.

Further evidence of the importance of the maritime cultural heritage of the Solent region is the wealth of submerged prehistoric landscape deposits. The main indicators of the presence of prehistoric landscapes are peat deposits. The most high profile submerged prehistoric site is located at Bouldnor Cliff in 12 metres of water off the North West coast of the Isle of Wight. Further diving off the coast of the New Forest has also identified extensive areas of submerged prehistoric land surfaces in around 5 metres of water. This type of site will be included, information from these sites being required to help devise appropriate management and protection for the future.