I worked as an archaeologist for the Trust for Lincolnshire Archaeology before I moved to Cornwall in 1987 and became self-employed. I learned to dive down here, and my interest in archaeology gradually shifted from above water to below water.

The idea behind CISMAS is that local people provide a pool of expertise to enable us to undertake maritime projects in this part of the world. There is a large pool of keen divers in Cornwall who want to become involved in proper underwater archaeology. This seemed like a brilliant scheme to give the maximum number of people an opportunity. We're all working on this as volunteers - to do this professionally would have cost ten or fifteen times as much.

It would not have happened without the help of the LHI, which I think is one of the few Lottery schemes applicable to maritime archaeology. It's so expensive to operate in the Scillies that we couldn't ever have afforded to do it, and the job would not have been done, which would have been a great shame. This part of our heritage would have been lost, and we would never have known exactly what survives in the debris field of the wreck.

But the really important thing is the way it's been done - not only will the academic results go into the local and national archives, so that there is a record in perpetuity, but also we have got all these feeds into the community so that the public can become involved and find out about it, it won't just be hidden away in an archive. Plus all the people who actually took part in the project will gain an enormous amount from it.

Some work to recover parts of the wreck of HMS Colossus was done in 2001-2002 and paid for by a private individual. When the stern section of the wreck was rediscovered, they applied to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to have it protected under the Protection of Wrecks Act. One of the stipulations of the act is that there has to be an archaeologist to advise about things like surveys. I got involved officially in 2001.

English Heritage paid for some scientific monitoring and survey on the site in 2003, and then no-one was able to put any more money into it. But I knew there was more work that desperately needed doing, so I had a look round at the options and one of them was to apply for an LHI grant.

We had to put an outline in, which we did. Then we did a project design, and then LHI support worker Chrissie Morris came down to see us and we had a long chat, at which point the scheme got changed quite a lot. We had put in for a fairly modest amount of money and Chrissie talked us into making it a much larger project, mainly because she wanted to see more community outputs.

So we've added a museum display, a popular booklet, a video film, and a website.