United Kingdom

[albasmi]

Scuba Diving in the UK

Water temperature:

5°C (41°F) in winter to 18°C (64°F) in summer (southern England), 4&degC (39°F) in winter to 13&degC (55°F) in summer (Scotland)

Suit:

Drysuit for most of the year, but a semidry is sufficient from June to October, or all year round if you are hardy enough!

Visibility:

1 - 25 metres (3 - 80 feet)

Type of diving:

Wrecks, caves, reefs, walls, piers, caverns, kelp forests

Marine life:

Basking sharks, seals, cuttlefish, octopus, conger eels, lobsters, crabs, seahorses, bib, pollack, bass, wrasse, blennies, gobies... and so on

Wreck diving is one of the most popular pastimes of the average British diver. The bulk of a ship that has laid undisturbed on the seafloor for years or decades holds a certain thrill be it in the UK or abroad. It is fortunate then for those who dive in the UK that Britain is blessed with more ship wrecks than any other country in the world. The best estimate of the number of ships lost in UK coastal waters is over a quarter of a million. Most of these shipwrecks are the result of collisions, storms and bad navigation. There is also the large number of casualties from the First and Second World Wars - a number nearing 7500. If that isn't reason to come here enough, it may surprise you to learn that life is no less prolific on some UK wrecks than if you were diving in some tropical lagoon.

If that has not whetted your appetite, look to the UK's reefs to do so. Under the water in the UK it is as beautiful and varied as it is on the surface. They have extensive cave systems, deep wall dives, picturesque sandy bays, piers, fast flowing drifts, rocky chimneys, fissures and gulleys and cold water reefs. All of these harbour life and the life found in our temperate waters is found in abundance. They have sharks, seals and otters. They have conger eels, seahorses, octopus, cuttlefish and shoals of fish in huge varieties.
However, if you have done your diver training in warm water and want to make the switch to cold water, there are some considerations to be made. Journeys out to dive sites can be gruelling with the traditional British weather turning even the strongest of stomachs. The visibility can be chronically bad, the water is cold - sometimes only 3 to 4°C, and the amount of extra kit you have to carry means it is not possible to change over from warm water diving to cold water diving instantly.