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Stingray needs your help - her gearbox exploded

Oct 2, 2025
2 min read

What a fantastic first year for our RHIB Stingray, enabling ghost gear recovery dives and helping support other brilliant marine conservation organisations around Cornwall.

Since her first recovery at Drakes Island in Plymouth Sound in the spring, Stingray's been busy responding to ghost gear reports around Cornwall's coastline and preventing further unnecessary death to marine life.

Stingray and our volunteer skippers have also supported Cornwall Wildlife Trust Seasearch efforts, with dive and snorkel surveys around the coast of Cornwall, ranging from Whitsand Bay, Looe, St Austell Bay, Falmouth Bay, Mounts Bay, St Ives Bay and lots of places in between!

We also threw our support behind the Ocean Conservation Trust seagrass efforts in Mounts Bay, helping them out at short notice to survey and gather important seeds ready for next year's restoration projects!

Stingray even spent the weekend supporting the Kernow Dive Festival fundraising event in June, which raised over £8,000 for DDRC Healthcare in Plymouth, a leading provider of vital services to divers in the UK.

Sadly, after a season of great work and over 100 sea hours since April, Stingray's gearbox failed on Monday. The breakdown left us stranded in Falmouth Bay, before a friendly local towed us back to Mylor Harbour.

Where possible, we do all our own maintenance and repairs. Our small volunteer team has already invested countless hours this year in keeping Stingray seaworthy and ready for action following her maiden launch. But this time, the problem is beyond fixing, and we need a new gearbox.

A genuine gearbox will cost us approx £3,500 before fitting – money we don't have for unexpected breakdowns. We can save money by considering non-genuine aftermarket gearbox options, and we've also considered sourcing a cheaper second-hand option; however, this last option comes with too many unknowns and could prove to be a false economy in the long run.

We need your help to get Stingray back out on the water, protecting wildlife and delivering marine conservation in our region!

Crowdfunder link:

Please note that you can set the Crowdfunder tip to zero by clicking on the "custom amount" button!

Every contribution, large or small, helps us get closer to being back out at sea, making a difference.



4 Comments


TAO WANG
Oct 10

It's striking that Stingray logged over 100 sea hours since April doing ghost gear recovery and survey support, yet a single gearbox failure can halt all of that. That really highlights how fragile volunteer-run conservation work is when it depends on one vessel. I'm curious whether the team has considered a contingency fund or backup boat arrangement for future breakdowns, since relying on crowdfunding each time seems risky for keeping this momentum going.

See also: https://loottoforge.org/

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Antes de probar magis tv, considero importante conocer qué necesita el dispositivo para funcionar correctamente. Revisar almacenamiento, conexión y compatibilidad puede prevenir algunos inconvenientes y permite comenzar con una expectativa más realista sobre la experiencia de uso.

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top game
Aug 03

This eggy car challenge is harder than it looks. The simple controls make it easy to start, but the hills need good timing.

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top game
Aug 03

This eggy car challenge is harder than it looks. The simple controls make it easy to start, but the hills need good timing.

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Fathoms Free is a group of volunteer divers who protect marine wildlife and the environment for everyone's benefit by removing ALDFG (abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gear) and other marine debris from the coastal waters of Cornwall and Devon.

ALDFG is also known as ghost gear or ghost fishing gear, as it continues to "fish," entangling, trapping, and killing wildlife indiscriminately. These trapped animals will die and act as bait, attracting more wildlife in a vicious cycle of death until the ghost gear is removed from the environment.

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Fathoms free are a registered charity.

UK charity number 1192613

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