Beaufort's Dyke lies midway between Northern Ireland and Scotland in the Irish Sea. Following the Second World War, the Ministry of Defence used the site as a munitions dump. At the bottom of the sea lie around 3 million tons mortars, rockets, grenades, and other weaponry.
In November 2016, Scottish fishermen from Oban entered quarantine in Lorn and Islands Hospital. They had dragged a Second World War era shell on board their vessel in fishing nets. The device exploded, burning off phosphorous contained inside. This left the fishermen experiencing chest pains, stomach pains, and streaming eyes.
The boat took a roll and, whatever happened, the thing went off. If this stuff touches steel it starts fizzing and ignites immediately. Within seconds the smoke was so thick the lads in their bunks down below could not see each other. They couldn’t even see the ladder to get out. In the space of a couple of minutes the fire had turned the steel white-hot. We found out later some crab claws we had on deck near it were completely cooked through. It was intense.
Fisherman, November 2016.
In March 2020, the British Government suggested a tunnel may be best to link Northern Ireland with Scotland. This would take the place of a formerly proposed bridge between the two and would attempt to alleviate the issues with building over the munitions dump.