Scuba Blue

Yesterday, saw our final trip of the season to dive with the seals at Lundy Island … and what a trip it was😎🤿🤩🌞

Yet again , we enjoyed a wonderful flat calm crossing to the island aboard Lundy Diving’s “Bright Horizon” with Ben and Gemma.

We were able to jump in for the 2 final seal dives of 2026 under the spectacular cliffs of the western side of the island … as soon as we dropped in, we knew it was going to be a special day🎉🎉

15+ metres visibility with the sun streaming down, the west side of Lundy, with its sandy bottomed gullies and incredible topography, in that viz cannot be beaten😮😮

Then came the seals…they came in force and wanted to play 😂🦭🤩. Constant interactions throughout the dives for all the buddy pairings on the boat meant that everyone had the most magical day.

Big bulls, heavily pregnant females and, of course, the hugely playful younger seals that want to play and play and play!!

Not only seals, but we also enjoyed shoals of sand eels, lobster, octopus, tompots, dragonets and loads more of our amazing UK marine life!🐙🦞🐟

An incredible day to finish our Lundy Island trips for the year … a huge thank you to the entire Lundy Diving team for their fabulous service on all our charters this year… you really are wonderful and we can’t wait to see you for more stunning trips to the island next year🦭🤿🤩😎

We had an extended weekend of PADI courses at Vobster Quay and have spent the last three days creating 7 new Open Water divers, 4 Advanced Open Water divers, a Self-Reliant diver and 3 Enriched Air Nitrox divers….What a fabulous few days😊😊

Steve, Chloe, Alistair, Coen, Sam, Isaac and Sinead completed their pool work through our intensive Open Water training option… a great way to complete the course if time is at a premium👍👍

They joined us at Vobster to complete their 4 open water dives on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The visibility at Vobster has improved hugely and the whole group absolutely loved their open water experience. Massive congratulations to you all and we look forward to seeing you very soon😎🤿🎉

On Sunday and Monday afternoons, we were joined by Mark, Lucie, Alice and Joe, 3 of whom had gained their open water certifications with us earlier this season and decided they wanted to move on to their Advanced Open Water extending their depth limit to 30m and opening up lots more dive sites to explore!🤿

They chose a selection of dives including deep, navigation, drysuit, wreck, peak performance buoyancy and surface marker buoy. They had all bought various items of scuba kit since their Open Water course… and following a fabulous couple of days, these guys are well and truly hooked on exploring the underwater world, a big well done to you all🤿🤿🤿

Yesterday, we also ran a self-reliant diver course. This is one of the more unusual courses we teach and really pushes the student with skills that will allow them to rectify any problems they may experience independently.

We don’t teach this course often and it was fabulous to teach something a bit different. Skills on this course included a no mask swim, detailed monitoring and recording of air use, time and depth, using a redundant air source, navigation, SMB work and much much more. A very important and fun course to take even if you are not planning on diving alone👍

Finally, it was back to Scuba Blue HQ from Vobster last night in time to teach an Enriched Air Nitrox course. Congratulations to Ali, Gary and Louise🥳

Our 3 students all have foreign trips booked with us and want to enjoy the extended bottom time Nitrox will bring whilst on our upcoming liveaboards to the Maldives and then the Red Sea🌞🌞🌞

Huge thanks as always to the Scuba blue team who gave up three days to help us, we could not have done this without you guys… you are all amazing🙏🙏🙏

Also thanks to the staff at Vobster Quay and massive congratulations to them for raising over £20,000 for the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance with their “Dare To Bare”event on Sunday afternoon which was a huge success🎉🎉🎉

🥰Fabulous to see our PADI Women’s Dive Day event down at Porthkerris, Cornwall, mentioned in the latest PADI blog. We were one of just 5 PADI dive centres from around the world to be featured!🌍🤩

It was an amazing event, our biggest yet, with over 75 divers, club members, families and friends joining in the fun!🤿😊💦

Read all about it here:

PADI Women's Dive Day 2026: One Weekend, One Ocean, One Community Here are some of the inspiring stories from the 12th annual PADI Women's Dive Day events held on 18 July, 2026.

We enjoyed more superb weather and diving over the weekend, this time the destination was Plymouth with the wonderful Discovery Divers Plymouth Ltd😎🤿

The sun shone yet again and we had fabulous surface conditions on both days😊🌞

Skipper Danny always finds us the sites where the diving is best and this weekend was no exception… the sites selected for Saturday’s group were Hillsea Point and Mewstone Ledges🤿

Hilsea Point has got to be one of the prettiest dives in the Plymouth area with its deep gullies and sandy bottoms absolutely full of life. An hour exploring this site is never enough as there is so much life and on Saturday the sun hitting the sand at the bottom of the gullies was stunning🤩. Octopus, Crayfish, Lobsters, Congers and fabulous amounts of Wrasse were amongst the highlights 🐟🦞🐙🪼

Mewstone Ledges is a fabulous second dive and with the big tides it provided a great drift dive with no need for any effort with fins😂😂 Photography proves more challenging with a fastish drift, so it was a case of just enjoying the wildlife as we went past 😂😂

On Sunday, with our second group of divers, we left early to allow us to dive what are, in many people’s opinion, 2 of the best and well known Uk dives… Eddystone and Hand Deeps🎉🎉🎉

First it was Eddystone with its towering lighthouse… Danny dropped us east of the stone and we dropped into fantastic visibility yet again. The topography of this site is stunning and wherever you look there is life. Our divers were treated to a huge anglerfish, shoaling sea bass, more octopus, Congers, lobsters and the jewel anemones out there are so gorgeous… what a wonderful site for Avril Rea to complete her 100th dive… big congratulations Avril 🤩🏆😂

Then it was onto Hand Deeps🤩. This site is, in our opinion, quite simply unbeatable🏆

The viz 12 miles out is superb and the when the sun hits the carpets of jewel anemones that cover the steep walls it is something so special😍🤿💦

This time it was a vast shoal of sea bream we dropped into as we crossed the reef towards the drop off. Once we descended the steep granite walls that drop to 50 metres, tompot blennies almost the size of mackerel posed amongst the jewels….congers both large and small shared crevices with beautiful prawns and brown crabs, huge pollack patrolled just off the reef …. it was just incredible🤿😎

In amongst all this skipper Danny was fantastic as always, keeping us all safe , fed and watered with pasties, doughnuts and chocolate muffins…thank you so much Danny🙏🙏🙏

This week, it is back into the pool with more new divers in readiness for another training weekend at Vobster🤩🤩🤩

Yet another wonderfully sunny and calm day at Lundy Island with lots of seals and some fantastic Diving😎🤿🌞

We set sail from Ilfracombe Harbour with mirror calm seas, which we enjoyed all the way to the island🤩

Our first dive site was Three-quarter wall bay where the seals were in playful form, yet again entrancing our divers with their antics… fin chewing, hand nuzzling and high speed passes🤩🦭

After a very relaxing surface interval and lunch, we dropped in on the Knoll Pins where we spotted lobsters, crayfish, huge brown crabs, beautiful jewel anemones, sunset cup corals and, of course, more seals🤿🦭

Then it was another very smooth crossing back to Ilfracombe, which included a spectacular pass from Ilfracombe’s Shannon class lifeboat coxed by Lundy diving’s skipper Ben’s other half, Sophie… thank you SO MUCH Sophie🙏🙏🙏

Finally, back in port it was time for fish, chips and ice creams…. Perfect 🐟🍟🍦

Another superb day, courtesy of Lundy Diving! Thank you so much for a wonderful experience🙏🙏

👏Congratulations to our new PADI AWARE Shark and Ray Conservation divers who completed this fantastic speciality course on our recent trip to Porthkerris, Cornwall🤿💦

The newly updated PADI speciality was a pleasure to deliver and a dive on the Helford river with Porthkerris Divers brought sightings of Thornback rays and Catsharks!😍🦈

Jodie, Ali, Avril and Steve can now use their newfound knowledge to actively contribute to the global shark and ray census and every dive can help to provide data which supports shark and ray protection worldwide🦈🥰🌍

We can’t wait to offer this fabulous speciality again next month on our club trip to snorkel with Blue sharks in the Celtic deep!🦈🤿

📷Underwater photos by Steve!👏

What a weekend at Vobster…10 brand new PADI Open Water divers!👏👏

These guys have definitely earned this certification as, due to a bloom in the water caused by the amazing weather and sunshine we have been having, the visibility at Vobster Quay Inland Diving Centre was very challenging.

We always ensure our students are in small groups at open water, but due to the limited viz we decided to make sure we were one to one with them over this weekend.

This was only possible due to the patience of the students who were happy to dive in waves and also the stamina and dedication of the Scuba Blue staff members🙏

This meant our divers were able to build their confidence in tough conditions and are now totally comfortable diving in limited visibility and will find diving from now on a walk in the park 🤩😎🤿

Huge congratulations to Zac, Dylan, Alice, Joe, Mark, Conor, Tilly, Tristan, Tadhg and Ethan for achieving this certification and we know that you are all going to love your continuing underwater adventures🎉🎉🎉

A special mention for Ethan and Conor who, at just 10 and 14 years old respectively, showed skills and maturity beyond their years to make themselves key members of the group…well done to you both😎😎😎

A huge thanks, again, to all the Scuba Blue staff members who worked so hard and also to the fab Vobster crew who, as usual, made a very busy weekend onsite run like clockwork🙏🙏🙏

This week we are off to Lundy for some more seal action followed by 2 days diving out of Plymouth aboard Red Alert at the weekend 🤿😎🤩

An absolutely stunning couple of days at Lundy Island with Lundy Diving over the weekend😎🤿🦭🌞

On Saturday, our boatload of divers jumped in at Brazen Ward on the east side of the island for dive 1. There was no time to relax underwater as our seal friends were immediately onto us wanting to interact and play. We had seals with us for the full hour underwater and all our Divers came out of the water absolutely buzzing🦭🦭🦭

For dive two we travelled to the south end of the island and were able to dive the wreck of the Carmine Filomena. It was quite a site to see with fantastic visibility, huge Po***ck patrolling the wreck and a plethora of very large Wrasse in and amongst the wreckage. We also saw lobsters, huge spider crabs and got to experience the many swim throughs this beautiful wreck offers.

We had such a great day that we totally forgot to take a group picture of the Saturday group so many apologies for this guys😔

On Sunday another 12 of our Divers travelled to the island. This time we were lucky enough to dive the west side and the stunning Dive site that is St John’s Stone.

This site has incredible deep Sandy bottomed gullies leading up to the shallows and the kelp, where our seal friends were again waiting for us.

As was the case on Saturday, all our buddy pairings came out having had fantastic seal encounters… So good that we decided to do our second Dive at the same site.

We were fortunate to have calm seas, beautiful viz and beautiful weather the whole weekend. It was also a huge privilege to have some of our divers who had not dived Lundy Island before and was fantastic to be able to show them this incredible place in its best light. This was also the perfect introduction to diving for Ellie, who joined us for her first UK sea dives since qualifying as a PADI Open Water diver just a few weeks ago! Well done Ellie, your buoyancy was fantastic… even with seals hanging off your fins!!🤣🦭🤿💦

Huge thanks to the amazing Lundy Diving… You guys really really know how to look after your guests and put them at ease…it is all so relaxed, yet professional and we appreciate massively all you do for us🌞🦭🤿🤩😎🙏

Days and weekends like these are what we dream of, thanks to everyone for making it such a special couple of days 🙏🙏🙏

Huge congratulations to Scarlett, who has achieved her PADI Master Seal Team certification!👏👏👏💪

It has been amazing to watch Scarlett grow in confidence and to see her skills as a young diver develop over the 10 Aqua-missions needed for this PADI certification🤿💦

She has so much enthusiasm for diving and absolutely loves spending time underwater! During her course she has worked incredibly hard to master buoyancy, compass work, rescue skills and more! A huge well done to you Scarlett… You smashed it!!👏👏👏🤿💦

A very busy training weekend at Vobster Quay Inland Diving Centre running PADI advanced and rescue courses, it was also wonderful to be joined by a number of Scuba Blue members who were refreshing their skills and continuing their diving adventures😎👍🤿

Lee and Ollie completed their PADI Advanced Open Water and also bolted on the Drysuit specialty. Ollie has been Diving for a while now and Lee passed his PADI Open Water earlier this summer. They made a great buddy pairing and took to the drysuits brilliantly. They have now opened up a huge number of new sites with their new depth certification of 30m🤩🤩

Avril, Jodie, Matt, Jack and Bill took on the PADI Rescue Diver course. This course is fantastic fun but also requires a huge amount of effort on behalf of the students… they all threw themselves into the course with huge enthusiasm and kept working really hard over the two days👍👍

The final scenario took real effort from these five, as the visibility was challenging and made locating missing divers more difficult than usual. However, they all completed successful rescues and the dive world is a safer place with these newly qualified rescue divers🎉🎉

Thanks so much to Vobster for the fantastic service as usual and also to all the Scuba Blue staff for their huge efforts and also fabulous acting skills when playing the parts of casualties on the rescue course 😂😂

Next weekend, we are off to Lundy Island on both days, fingers crossed for blue skies and calm seas 😎🤿