Ever wondered about the plants and animals that live on shipwrecks? What sorts of effects do these critters have on archaeological remains? Can the types of flora and fauna that chose to colonise a particular wreck tell us anything about the stability of the site, for example?

These are some of the questions that Wessex Archaeology hopes to answer in the exciting new ‘Wrecks: Ecology’ project.

The project will investigate whether archaeological information from wrecks can also provide information about the plants and animals that inhabit them, and from this, say something about the environmental processes at work off the East Sussex coast.

Understanding the ecology of wrecks will improve the management, conservation and monitoring of these heritage sites. It will also improve archaeologists’ ability, when considering seabed developments, to better assess their potential positive and negative impacts on historical wrecks.

Visit the project website for more information.

The ‘Wrecks: Ecology’ project is funded by the Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) through English Heritage.