The bomb-hunters scouring UK waters for unexploded weapons

Lee Gooderham
Image caption,Ask bomb expert Lee Gooderham what has surprised him recently and he mentions a huge 4,000lb (1,800kg) bomb his team came across in the North Sea

By Laurence Cawley

BBC News, East of England

Hundreds of thousands of unexploded bombs and mines carpet the seabed off the UK’s coast. Many are known about and mapped, but plenty more are not, posing a potential danger to those working at sea. It is Lee Gooderham’s business to find them.

The map projected onto a screen at an industrial estate in Norfolk is the result of 12 years’ work.

As Mr Gooderham, founder of Hethel-based Ordtek, zooms in on the English Channel and the southern North Sea, thousands of tiny red dots emerge like scattered confetti.

“Each of those dots is a reported munition,” he says. “We are talking hundreds of thousands of items.”

What the map does not show are all the unknown munitions still lurking on the seabed.

“We are finding unexploded ordnance and dealing with it on a daily basis,” Mr Gooderham says.

“There are many that we don’t know about.”

Despite being dropped – or dumped – decades ago, unexploded ordnance (UXO) continues to pose a very real danger to those working in our waters.

“The real problem is when fishing vessels and dredgers encounter unexploded ordnance,” says Mr Gooderham.

“That is when it becomes dangerous.”

In 2020, fishing vessel Galwad-Y-Mor was thrown into the air when a World War Two bomb exploded 25 miles (40km) north of Cromer, Norfolk.

Five crew members were injured, including one left blinded in one eye.

Lewis Mulhearn on a boat holding a lobster
Image caption,Lewis Mulhearn, who suffered multiple injuries in a blast at sea, died in January 2023

Skipper Lewis Mulhearn, 39, won a bravery award for saving the lives of his crew.

Mr Mulhearn, who suffered multiple injuries, died in January 2023.

Mr Gooderham’s clients, however, are not from the fishing industry, but the offshore and renewables sector.

“Some of their early sites in particular were in high-risk UXO areas, such as Thames Gateway, Gunfleet Sands and those type of areas,” says Mr Gooderham, whose firm is one of a small number offering consultancy for UXO.

“All of a sudden they were looking to put cables and assets out into the sea in these high-risk areas and, of course, they hadn’t really considered that there could be UXO there.

“Scroby Sands, Gunfleet Sands, London Array – all of those got built, very near shore, in high-risk areas.”

One of the Ordtek team carrying out desk-based research
Image caption,Team members research potential bombs from their desks before surveys are carried out at sea

The job of finding UXO starts with desk-based work and archive research.

“Once we know there is a risk there and there is a problem, a survey is carried out,” Mr Gooderham says.

“This involves sending out a vessel with geophysical equipment, a magnetometer, and we oversee that – we are on board the vessel.

“We’ll get the data back to the office where it will be processed and they’ll say ‘We think this is a bomb, that is a bomb, this is a bomb – you need to do something about it.'”https://sukaati.com/

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