Royal Navy divers were called in after a fishing vessel trawled up a World War 2 mine off the Kent coast over the weekend.

The Whitstable-based commercial fishing vessel caught a 1,000 pound World War 2 parachute mine in their nets on Friday.

The crew anchored a mile off the coast at Margate and contacted coastguards at Dover who in turn sought the help of the Royal Navy Explosive and Ordinance Disposal unit based at Portsmouth.

The Royal Navy dive team fixed explosives to the mine which was then lowered back to the seabed and detonated. A second attempt on Saturday made an explosion visible from the shore, according to the RNLI.

Peter Barker, Margate Lifeboat Operations Manager says: “It is suspected that there are very many such unexploded devices from the Second World War still out on the seabed and it is not unusual when fishing vessels trawl them up in their nets.”