Shipwreck Tester

About us

Thanks to advanced sonar technology, the waters surrounding the islands reveal a remarkable underwater landscape—home to historic shipwrecks, dramatic submarine cliffs, sweeping sandbanks, and diverse marine habitats. These environments, largely unexplored, offer valuable opportunities for oceanographers, marine scientists, and adventurous divers alike. Many of these sites are potential candidates for protection, and the data we gather will be essential to deepening our understanding of this hidden world.

Channel Islands Hydrographic Survey was established in 2025 to survey and chart shipwrecks and seabed features around the Channel Islands. Our volunteer team includes researchers, maritime archaeologists, marine scientists, and divers from across the islands.

Using high-resolution multibeam sonar, side-scan sonar, and underwater magnetometers, we will locate, survey, and generate detailed 3D images of the seabed, shipwrecks, and other underwater features we discover. Our aim is to collect high quality subsea data that can benefit the general public, marine scientists, conservationists, and other stakeholders interested in our maritime environment.

Finding Our Sunken Treasures

Dive Deeper

Exploring for Shipwrecks

Shipwrecks are an integral part of our submarine landscape and maritime heritage. The waters of the Channel Islands contain hundreds of known and as yet undiscovered shipwrecks from all ages.

Our aim is to find and survey as many of these wrecks as possible using ultra high resolution multibeam and side scan sonar equipment, at an adequate special resolution to establish a comprehensive database for future monitoring initiatives. Other techniques will be used as progress is made and the database is expanded.

With the help of local fishermen, divers and marine archaeologists, we hope to locate and survey as many of the known shipwrecks as possible in order to provide a high-quality database. The project will commence within the territorial waters of the island of Jersey but will also include specific sites within the waters of the Bailiwick of Guernsey.

With the help of local maritime historians we hope, where possible, to tell the story of the wrecks we find and the efforts to identify them.

Advanced Seabed Mapping

Explore

A Seabed Mapping Initiative for the Channel Islands

Primary marine bathymetry datasets derived from full coverage high resolution multibeam sonar surveying, is critical for the development of marine knowledge, economy, and policy, as well as the protection of the marine environment of the Channel Islands.

Exposed to view of our advanced sonar technology, the Island’s waters reveal a fantastic array of submarine cliffs, sweeping sand dunes as well as a multitude of diverse marine habitats just waiting to be explored by oceanographers, marine scientists and intrepid divers. Many of these unexplored habitats will be candidate for protection and the data we collect will be a crucial starting point for this work.

Almost all activities in the ocean are underpinned by marine geospatial data. Our aim is to collect high-quality bathymetric data to support environmental and scientific study and well as for the purpose of general public interest.

Science, Collaboration and Education

The survey data will provide an important resource for informing multiple disciplines and become accessible to the broader scientific community, supporting research, maritime archaeology and public engagement. Through collaboration with UK universities we hope to explore and map areas of special scientific interest in Channel Island Waters and make the data available for future research.