Diving in the United Kingdom

Diving in the UK is often a cold and challenging affair. There are interesting wrecks and marine environments all around its convoluted coast and many islands, the standout being the scuttled German Imperial Fleet in Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands.

General conditions
British diving is like Longfellow's Matilda: when it's good, it's very very good. . . and then there's the other 360 days of the year. Its main limitations are first, that it's often cold and dark, so you need a dry suit; second, it's organised around club diving, with groups organising their own boat and equipment, it lacks the kind of resort dive shacks where you show up with little more than a credit card and within the hour you're on the water. These two are linked because a dry suit has to fit just so, else the neck seal either garottes you or lets in gouts of cold water. It's not practical to hire one off the shelf, and you must have training in how to use it, with try-outs in the pool and at an inland site before going out to sea. You can get away with wearing a wet suit provided a) it's a chunky toasty affair, say a two-piece 7 mm semi-dry, and b) the water is relatively warm, i.e. summer and not particularly deep or extended dive time, and c) you only do the one dive then change and get warm. Coming up with blue lips from Dive One and shivering through a surface interval is not a good prelude to Dive Two. It's worth noting that in British diving, it's not the water temperature that's the problem, but the surface conditions. In the south-west, water temps tend to range from 16c in late summer to 9c in late winter/early spring. However, surface conditions are invariably chilling, with strong winds and temperatures in single digits in winter, and rarely exceeding the low-mid 20s, even in summer, while British dive boats rarely offer much, if any, shelter. Diving is often from rigid hull inflatable boats, or small fibreglass affairs with little except a small cabin for the coxswain and maybe an electric jug for making hot drinks. The fact that operators will typically proudly advertise the fact they have a head (toilet) on board, if they do, says a lot. That said, a day with two summer shore dives in Cornwall, with 40-45min run times in <20m can be achieved in comfort with a high quality semi-dry suit, especially if one comes prepared with a windproof and a thermos.If temperate rocky reefs and wrecks are your thing, you will be richly rewarded.... provided the weather holds out.

British waters have a big tidal range: 5 m is not unusual. This generates stiff currents, so dive plans are intricately planned to hit slack water, or planned as drifts. Boats ramps, piers and shore-diving locations dry out at low tide, and depth computations also need to factor in the height of the tide. The Gulf Stream means that, while places on the same latitude are ice-bound, British waters are diveable in winter in calm periods, with winter waters in the south-west generally in the 9c range, while Scotland tends to be a few degrees colder, around 6 to 7c. Nowhere in the UK has sea-ice in the winter, though inland freshwater sites may get a layer of ice during colder winters. The predominant weather system is from the Atlantic: southwesterly, mild and wet, often with depressions generating gales; spells of nor'easterly weather can also blow you out. They tend to bring cold, dry weather.

Much diving in the UK is onto wrecks, the legacy of a country that traded worldwide by sea, and the many casualties of war. There is protective legislation for many, especially of wartime wrecks that still hold the remains of those who lost their lives. Lifting of any artifact from the sea-bed, when allowed at all, must be declared to the "Receiver of Wreck" who will determine its disposition. By and large, the best diving in found in Cornwall, the south-west coast of England, Pembrokeshire in Wales, and the west coast of Scotland, all of which features extensive temperate rocky reefs with a wide variety of life. Visibility on these coasts is variable, and within days can go from "excellent" to "atrocious" if the winds change. The east coast is generally dominated by sand and mud, with low visibility, colder temperatures (being blocked from the full force of the gulf-stream) and a lack of a rocky reef systems to harbour life, though a few sites, such as the Farne Islands, do break the trend. There are many inland sites in lakes, quarries and gravel lagoons, and cave diving in limestone regions.

The main training agency in UK is BSAC, though PADI certification is widely available. If you're here for an extended period, e.g. at university, by all means get involved with your college dive club and get trained. This will take several weeks and you'll probably do your first few open-water dives in a chilly quarry. But nowadays most Brits train in warm climates then decide whether they want to brave their cold home seas (and mostly decide against). You'd be mad to travel to Britain for the purpose of initial training. The Bible New Testament describes how a madman was cured by driving out his demons to enter a herd of pigs, who plunged over a cliff into the Sea of Galilee (Mark 5:1-20, Matthew 8:28-34, Luke 8:26-39). If those pigs had instead done the traditional British diver training course, they'd be just about qualified by now.

Dive sites: overview
Starting at the northern tip of the country, because Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands is probably the only dive area for which you'd make a special trip to the UK. When Germany surrendered at the end of World War One, its fleet was disarmed and brought to this enclosed reach of sea. Peace negotiations dragged on and Admiral Reuter believed the British would seize the fleet for their own purposes, so he had them all scuttled. Many were later salvaged, but seven big ships remain (in about 30 m depth) and are regularly dived. They've been there for a century and are fragile but still impressive. Orkney also has shallower wrecks and reefs, eg along the "Churchill barrier", the causeway that links several islands.

Continuing clockwise, the northeast coast is scenic, rocky and often suitable for shore diving, especially around the Scottish / English border. Areas include the villages of Dunbar and St Abbs, and further out lie the Farne Islands of Northumberland. To the south, coastal conditions aren't so good, and you have to venture some miles offshore, eg to the wreck of the Polish liner Piłsudski off the Humber estuary. Much of the east coast is dominated by sand and muddy shallow seabed, with few features to provide havens for life, and low visibility, as a number of major rivers drain into the North Sea, including the Thames and Humber.

The English Channel is littered with wrecks. Sites (east to west) include: Chesil Cove and Portland Bill in Dorset, Swanage Pier in Dorset, Fort Bovisand in Devon, the Eddystone Rocks off Plymouth in Cornwall, The Manacles rocks off the Lizard Peninsula of Cornwall, and the archipelago of the Isles of Scilly. The further west along the coast one goes, the better conditions become. From Swanage westwards, the toopgrahy of the seabed becoems increasingly dominated by rocky reefs, and visbility and variety of life improves. Around Cornwall, basking sharks, blue sharks and seals can be found, as well as ocassional exotic visitors such as Mola-Mola (Sunfish). Key sites here are Swanage Pier (a simple shore dive that's very popular with macro photographers), Brixham, Falmouth, and the Lizard.

The Bristol Channel lies between Cornwall and Wales, its premier site being the protected island of Lundy. Much of South Wales is industrial, till you reach the attractive peninsula of Pembrokeshire, eg Martin's Haven. There's another area around the islands of Anglesey and Holy Island.

Further north, there's a lot of river run-off (eg from the Mersey) and the west coast sites are exposed to the weather. There's not much until you get into the Firth of Clyde, with many wrecks, and on Arran the protected area of Lamlash Bay. The seas around the Hebrides are clear of run-off and, whilst often wild, there may be shelter between the islands; the Sound of Mull being a popular example. You will be very lucky if conditions allow a trip out to lonely St Kilda, 40 miles out in the Atlantic, though visibility here can be spectacular.

Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man have diving similar to the Hebrides.

UK inland dive sites are in flooded quarries and lakes. They're generally only dived for training / refreshers, testing kit, or if bad weather has blown out a sea trip. Most dive clubs are within 30 mins drive of their local "muddy puddle". Some bigger centres worth a longer drive include Stoney Cove between Leicester and Coventry, the National Diving and Activity Centre at Chepstow, and Capernwray near Carnforth.

Cave diving (including in old mine workings) in Britain is considered a technique of caving, not a specialty within diving, so it's not covered here. Enough to say that you need to be very good indeed at what you're doing; several of the divers in the Tham Luang cave rescue of 2018 were British.

The UK has a large number of dive sites, both inland and coastal, and many of these are wreck dives. The inland dives include a number of lakes, quarries and caves.

Marine dive sites
This section covers natural marine sites, and also built structures such as piers. Any wrecks there are described in a later section.

Wreck sites
Wreck sites are plentiful and popular and include:



Inland sites
Inland sites include disused quarries (eg Stony Cove) which may be deep, ponds and lagoons (usually shallow), and lakes. Some rivers can be dived (eg Devil's Bridge on the Lune) but are shallow and conditions seldom allow.

Respect
Several wrecks are archaeological sites or war graves - if diving is permitted at all, it's "look but don't touch".

Artifacts taken from the seabed must be promptly declared to the "Receiver of Wreck" - yes, this is nowadays online, with no tricorn hats involved.

Don't pilfer crabs or lobsters from fishermen's pots, or raise suspicion that your legitimate catch came from there. It's a sure way to get the harbour barred to divers.

Get help
Your first urgent call at sea should be to the Coastguard on VHF channel 16, 156.800 MHz. They're also reached by 999 by landline or mobile. They can coordinate response by other vessels (not just the lifeboat), by helicopter and landside. This includes pan-pan-pan incidents: the tanker as yet invisible over the murky horizon can just about miss your drifting RIB if it starts altering course immediately.

Medical assistance should be sought through the standard NHS: "treat the patient, not the bend". Especially around popular diving areas, responders are used to incidents and have a nose for what's likely to be decompression sickness or sea-sickness or heart attack or whatever. If they seem obtuse, you could call +44 1224 681818 in Scotland or +44 7831 151523 in the rest of the UK, or the DAN international number +1 919 684 9111. There are four categories of receiving centres for UK diving casualties and it helps to land first time in the correct one, so never go haring away towards a hyperbaric facility without a prior conversation with a specialist.

Get service
First ask a local diver: it's astonishing what spares and tools they routinely carry. You could probably construct a large artificial shipwreck with what's in the car trunks near a popular site.

But one reason they do so is the limited back-up. Centres live or die by how much new stuff they can sell; they may have limited in-shop repair capacity, sending stuff away for repair or ordering parts as required. A dive shop in Glasgow, closed Sunday, is little help when you've ripped your arm cuff in Ullapool. Centres may put on excursions and training courses but aren't in the business of organising dives for passers-by. And where can you get an air fill - and on Saturday evening? So you need to look ahead, a standard online search will do, though again the local divers and skippers will know what's possible.

And as noted at the outset, the UK is not a diving scene where you just saunter up with log book and credit card, hire equipment, and get on the boat. Shops sell not rent. There are free-standing boat operators but they may be booked out to clubs with no room for extras. Always plan ahead; if only you could do so with the British weather.

Get around
Many ferries and road tunnels (eg A19 Tyne tunnel) ban "hazardous materials". This really should not include divers' tanks - breathing gas pressurised up to 230 bars is specifically exempt from HSE regulations - but companies are idiosyncratic. Having to empty all your air tanks is not a good start to a dive trip, especially as you watch all the RVs with campergas and spare fuel being waved aboard. So check ahead on the company website.

Stay safe
UK diving conditions require a relatively high level of competence and fitness compared to the tropical scuba destinations.

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