'over the horizon'


Artists David Harbott, Anna Keleher and Kate Paxman are exploring the Berry Head National Nature Reserve which lies on the urban fringes of Brixham in Devon. Berry Head is a 400 million year old limestone promontary and is a designated SSSI for its nationally rare plants, its colony of horseshoe bats, the largest colony of guillemots on the South Coast and its geology. It houses the remains of 2 Napoleonic Forts which are scheduled monuments, and a vast, abandoned quarry which dates back over 300 years.
'over the horizon' is a Smooth Space project in partnership with the Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust with support from the English Riviera Global Geopark

Wednesday, 13 June 2012

 

Graham Kenyan -" I do a lot of diving, a lot of scuba diving. Erm, well, it can be very, very good, the problem with Berry Head, is because it sticks out so much you get a lot of currents going round Berry Head itself, so it's quite dangerous, it's very deep, because it sticks out so far, er what is it about three hundred feet high, the cliffs, and the water it just drops straight off so you've got about twenty to thirty metres of water straight off the edge of the rocks, erm, what's it like, it looks like, underneath it looks like it does above, it's very rocky, leading down onto like a pebbly, sandy bottom. It's the currents really, so you can do a drift dive, if the boat will drop you at one end and you'll just get pulled all the way round and it'll pick you up at the other side. Er, but lots and lots of fishing line nets, things like that which are obviously quite dangerous for anybody diving off there, I wouldn't dive, well you've got the old quarry down there, have you ever gone down there? It's quite a walk down, it's worth a visit, erm, and they've got, well have a walk around the old quarry, it's lovely as long as you can cope with the walk back.

Incidents? At Berry Head, no not really, there have been some, there was a young lad lost there about two years ago, er when his parents where, they were diving off round the edge of Berry head, the engine cut out on the boat and they couldn't get to him the parents, the son was diving with the father and the father got back to the boat and because the wind and what have you pulls the boat away, the lad was still in the water and they got separated and he went down and they found him two or three days later, not good no, it happens sometimes.

Alexandra Brown -Have you found anything whilst diving?

Graham Kenyan - Off of berry Head? No, no. Fish! Dinner, crabs, lobsters, er, you get monk-fish, bass, Pollock, mackerel, er, loads and loads of different types of fish, er you get scallops, erm, anything you want for dinner really I suppose. There's loads of little, you do sometimes if you come away from Berry Head a little bit, er, in the shallower areas you get what they call sea grass and it's only something that happens during the seasons, during the summer season, the sea grass grows and that's where seahorses live, so they'll connect themselves to the seagrass, if you're really careful you can see them when you're snorkelling as well, you'll find tiny little seahorses connected to the seagrass, but that only lasts till about September that disappears then ad then they go off, I don't know where they go, deeper water I suppose."

Text by Graham Kenyan,
Interview & transcript by Alexandra Brown,
Post by Anna Keleher
Links http://www.englishrivierageopark.org.uk/section_sub.cfm?section=18&sub=134 

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