ADVENTURER and Vendee Globe hero Pete Goss wielded a hefty set of bolt croppers to cut a safety chain and formally open a £2.5 million extension to Plymouth's Mayflower Marina today (Saturday June 6, 2009).

The marina was the first to be built in the port, and is now 30 years old, with a raft of improvements having been completed over the past five years, and the latest work the creation of a substantial new concrete apron to provide much needed additional parking and boat storage space fronting on to Stonehouse Creek.

Jeremy Greenaway, our South West correspondent, writes:

A RASH of illegal, unattended nets has added to the dangers of navigating in Plymouth Sound with, in one case, a monofilament gill net found attached to the risers of navigational buoys in the River Tamar and, in a separate incident, a yacht snared for a time after her rudder fouled an unmarked drift net off Drake's Island.

But in the worst case, a SCUBA diver nearly lost his life off West Hoe when he became trapped in it. The net had first been discovered close to The Waterfront pub and restaurant at West Hoe in January, and was reported to Devonport's Queen's Harbour Master, the Ministry of Defence dockyard police and other maritime authorities.