Grey seal at Lundy
Favourite item of dive kit?
SR: My Hollis lite wing- love it.
SH: Has to be my AP Inspiration CCR rebreather. Once you’ ve dived closed circuit, it’ s honestly hard to go back – the lovely silence with no bubbles, the warm gas, those glorious long bottom times, and the way the marine life doesn’ t scatter the second you breathe out. It completely changes how you feel down there.
Best UK diving area
SR: Plymouth as it is my local haunt but I loved the seals at Lundy and third place would be more seal action at the Farne Island- though it is a very long way away from South Devon!
SH: I’ m properly torn between North and South here— but it’ s got to be North West Scotland or Shetland. North West Scotland gives you those dramatic sea lochs and the odd seal photobombing your dive. And then Shetland goes and raises the bar all over again— crystal-clear Atlantic water, stunning walls and gullies and this wonderful feeling of diving right at the edge of the map. Both of them feel wild and uncrowded.
E49 submarine, Shetland
Favourite overseas destination?
SR: Galapagos – I’ ve been three times and it never fails to deliver for big life. These days, Indonesia is definitely growing on me. Who knew I would get into muck diving in Lembeh followed by a fill of turtle action over at Bunaken Island.
SH: Truk Lagoon, no contest. The lagoon out in Micronesia that holds the ghost fleet of the Japanese Imperial Navy, sunk in the Second World War— dozens of wrecks that have quietly become artificial reefs, holds still full of trucks, aircraft and munitions, all covered in decades of coral and absolutely teeming with fish. You’ re diving and touching living history in the same breath. Nowhere else quite comes close.
Scalloped hammerhead sharks at Darwin Island, Galapagos
A tank on the San Francisco Maru, Truk Lagoon
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