Andy Jackson, underwater filmmaker and cinematographer, has died

Sad news has reached us from England, where Andy Jackson has died of a heart attack at the age of 60. The Yorkshire-based diver was known for his underwater films, which he made since the 1980s, and for discovering and exploring many wrecks in the North Sea.

A lifelong resident of Scarborough, Jackson described himself as passionate about marine life and a campaigner for conservation and historic wrecks. In the 1980s he persuaded the Hydrographic Office to give us data obtained from side scan sonar searches in return for information gathered from his dives.

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“We would set off from Scarborough or Whitby to investigate the information he was receiving and the excitement was always incredible because we never knew what we would find under the water.” – James Munt a long-time friend of Jackson said. “Everyone enjoyed working with Andy as he was an extremely responsible diver and an excellent professional.”

Jackson and his dive team have collected 15 bells from wrecks off the Yorkshire coast, each time strictly following the procedures for reporting their findings. Andy always insisted that the artefacts were on display at the Scarborough SAC for at least a year before going to the finder (British law is very different to Polish law).

In the mid-2000s, Jackson led a team of technical divers who discovered a number of wrecks sunk during the First World War by the German submarine U57. Together with Carl Racey they also discovered the last two of eight WWI submarine wrecks lost off the Yorkshire coast – UB41 and UB75.

Apart from wrecks, he was passionate about marine life and his favourite kind of dives were shallow ones, among representatives of flora and fauna. For his short film “The Last Seahorse in Studland?” he was the winner of the British Wildlife Photography Awards in the HD Video category. He was currently working on another film about seahorses.

Source: divernet.com
Photo: Julie Hatcher