Today I picked up my first fins from Mark at the Dive Bunker in Burntisland, Fife. Today was also one of those days when I felt that I’d been shown a key to a door, a chance conversation with someone that brought together a few areas of thought; thoughts which were also presented with an opportunity to be transplanted onto something concrete for a structured course of investigation.

On the sea-bed of the Firth of Forth lies a wreck called HMS Saucy. This war-time tug sunk after it hit a mine, killing 26 crew members, many of whom were related. According to Mark, a couple of his dive regulars have felt strange presences under the water, as if someone was trying to hold them down. Sightings of other divers and torch light beams have also been reported when there are no other divers in the water at that time.

I was telling him of my investigations into electromagnetism, and of Usman Haque, who studied varying perceptions regarding fluctuations in the electromagnetic environment with his research project Haunt. The penny dropped for both of us. The Saucy, as a tug-boat, has reels of copper wire attached to its decks which may be acting as some sort of antennae for electromagnetic radiation. The wreck is quite shallow and sits at 23 metres, still within a range to pick up man-made signals.

This notion is also added to by the fact that water has a ‘memory’ for frequency. ‘In order to account for magnetic field effects and a memory for frequency it is desirable to think in terms of a helical structure in water, so that structure waves would occupy those electrical and acoustic modes of propagation appropriate to a helix. These must be capable of being set up in water by the spectrum of coherent oscillations, which uniquely characterizes the chemical bonds comprising the original tincture models: or in the case of electromagnetic potentisation, by the frequencies of the electromagnetic fields applied. It does not matter whether the structure waves are electromagnetic or acoustic because bio-molecules are mostly large dipoles and will behave as transducers (energy and signal converters)’. Electromagnetic Man

Is it possible then, that the copper wire is attracting more EM radiation than would exist on a normal wreck, and is the fact that water has a ‘memory’ for frequency adding to the bizarre ESP occurrences experienced by the divers? According to my reading, the salinity of water also aids its ‘memory’ to a certain point, so at what point (saline concentration or water depth) would this salinity affect and slow down both the electromagnetic memory and the electromagnetic ability to propagate; are these two interlinked and if so what is the formulaic relationship? How does increased electromagnetic activity in water affect human perception at depth, particularly if the EM wave has ‘departed’ from itself, leaving only the magnetic half? Acoustic waves travel more easily through water whereas EM waves are absorbed, but how does this opposing fact (as regards our usual air environment) contradict ‘normal’ perception?

Here then, in the HMS Saucy, only 40 miles away from my home, is a future project; an underwater arts residency that will set out to document and record the electromagnetic frequencies, sounds and sightings around this vessel. To potentially investigate if we indeed have one large sub-aqua radio that electromagnetically influences perception. If I can mange ten dives, another exam and a few more cold-water mask-clears, I may be able to start to find out. First of all however, I must let myself love again… my cold blue fins tenderly immersed in a warm Red Sea.