Plymouth Trip - May 2025

TripsWreck DivingMarine Life Interactions
Written By Steven Earnshaw

Located in the county of Devon, southwest England, Plymouth is a port city that is well known for its rich maritime heritage and historic Barbican district with narrow, cobbled streets.

Luckily for us however, thats not all Plymouth is well known for. Originally referred to as Sudtone (South Farm) in the Domesday Book of 1086, the area that would later become Plymouth strangely began as farmland on a small peninsula at the mouth of the River Plym. It later evolved into Sutton Harbour, becoming the center of medieval Plymouth.

Over time, the town's strategic coastal position has made it a hub for both maritime exploration and military operations.

Curiously, Plymouth has long been one of the few remaining stretches of UK coastline which, until now, has remained largely unexplored by most members of the SEPE Diving instructional team. Despite this however, it has always been one of the more desirable place for us to visit.

With 300 miles and a 7 hour drive standing between glorious Yorkshire and picturesque Devon, we needed to ensure that when we finally came to visiting this amazing city, we set out to experience the best scuba diving that Plymouth had to offer. With high standards and outstanding service in mind, the obvious choice was to get in touch with the guys at In Deep Dive Centre located within the harbours Mount Batten Centre. 

In Deep have long been established as one of the UK’s leading dive centres, providing top quality RAID diver training, Blue Shark snorkelling as well as superb dive boat charter packages, all run from Europe’s biggest gas filling station which simply has to be seen to be believed.

During our time with In Deep, we were incredibly well catered for by Ben, Sam, Freya, Liam and the rest of the team who were exceptionally accommodating despite our relentless demands and need for varying after hours fills and kit repairs.

Their premises is literally on the waters edge and provides full changing and showering facilities as well as the usual gas, spares and repairs services you would expect from a top level dive centre. The boats are easily accessible with plenty of spacious trollies provided for carting your gear.

More importantly, the highly professional In Deep team were all found to be both incredibly experienced and super knowledgable, regularly offering customers an abundance of interesting historical information and facts relating to both the local area and planned dive sites. These guys really couldn't have done enough for us.

Coincidently, what better time could there have been for SEPE Diving to visit Plymouth, than during one of the biggest octopus booms in recent history, as reported by the media. For many of us, this is what scuba diving is all about.

Golden opportunities like this are few and far between, with the ability to take some amazing photographs so that we can explain to the shore-dwellers amongst us exactly why we do it.

Carli Cocciardi, from the Devon Wildlife Trust, recently told the BBC:

"We typically see two species in the UK, the common octopus and the curled octopus. The south-west of England is really the northern edge of the common octopus's range, so sightings here are significant, but this isn't the first time we've seen a spike. Similar increases were recorded in 1899, 1948, and again in 2022”

Interestingly though, despite being named the common octopus, it's actually not overly common to see these eight-legged creatures in UK waters at all.

According to numerous local fishermen which we spoke with during our time in and around the Plymouth area, several stated that they have noticed an increase in both the numbers and size of these cephalopods over the past few months. This has sadly meant that there are fewer lobsters, crabs and shellfish for the them to catch because this is what the octopuses feed on.

Thankfully for divers, the easily recognisable discarded piles of crustacean remains and other shellfish almost always led us to discover yet another inquisitive octopus relaxing on a reef primed for photographing.

Unlike other trips, for Plymouth we made the decision to keep the party size to a maximum of 6, with an equal balance of recreational, technical and rebreather divers coming aboard.

With 3 days diving planned from Wednesday to Friday, we remained somewhat flexible and openminded with regard to the availability of certain sites, weather permitting of course.

As with most day boat charters, dives were limited to 60 minutes surface to surface, with the maximum depth achieved by the end of the week being 25m.

Overall, our days finished as follows:

Day 1 - Wednesday

Dive 1 - FS Poulmic

Dive 2 - Pier Cellars

Day 2 - Thursday

Dive 3 - Pier Cellars

Dive 4 - Breakwater Fort

Day 3 - Friday

Dive 5 - HMS Scylla

Dive 6 - SS James Eagan Layne

Day 1 - Wednesday

For the 3 days, we spent the first day on charter boat ‘Size Matters’, and then ‘Seeker’ for the second and final.

Dive 1 - FS Poulmic

Our first dive was on the FS Poulmic, which is a French transport ship from World War II currently lying on the rocky seabed south of Plymouth Breakwater. T

he 350-ton vessel had a length of 121.5 feet, a beam of 26.5 and a depth of 10. It had a 540-horse power diesel engine that was able to move the ship at up to 12 knots.

The vessel sustained heavy damage and is now scattered across the seabed between reef outcrops a few metres high running approximately north to south.  Most of the debris is low lying and covered with seaweed during the summer months making it difficult to distinguish wreck debris from the underlying seabed itself, but small bits of broken pottery can still be found across the site.

Machinery, such as the engine and deck winches as well as a bit of the ship’s structure still remain and can be explored.

The wreck lies in a depth of 14m (plus tide height) with the main sections scattered in a debris field over 70m long. The largest remaining part of the ship is at 50° 19.193 N 004° 09.696 W, which is the engine bed and bottom plates.

The engines themselves have been removed but the bent remenants of the starboard side prop shaft is still in place.

Dive 2 - Pier Cellars

Most of the marine life we saw was on the Pier Cellars site, which was once a Brennan Torpedo station, defending Cawsand Bay and western access to Plymouth Sound and The Breakwater. Initially opened by the Victorian military in 1889 to hold one of the two Brennan torpedoes, the other of which was held at Drake’s Island.

Brennan torpedoes were designed to be fired from shore onto waterways, as a means to defend against sea-based attacks, and were named after Louis Brennan, the Australian who designed them.

Pier Cellar remained an active Brennan torpedo station and test site until 1903 after building work to include a searchlight was completed in 1896, and an iron landing dock in 1898.

This site is now used by the Torpoint naval base as part of a 28-hour training exercise known as Daring Leap, during week 4 of a 10-week long military training course.

Diving here over days 1 and 2, we managed to find an abundance of octopus, eels, shrimp, crab and lobsters as well as a decent sized small spotted catshark.

Day 2 - Thursday

Dive 3 - Pier Cellars

Similarly to the previous day, we discovered plenty more mating octopus, shrimp, wrasse, spider crabs and common lobster, but this time embarked on quite a significant drift dive further along the coast.

On a personal level, we would say this site was by far the best for photography and one of the most enjoyable, catering for the full spectrum of diving abilities and confidence levels.

Dive 4 - Breakwater Fort

Taking 20 years to construct and built at an enormous cost in both money and lives, the Breakwater Fort is a massive concrete island in the middle of the Sound and was one of many built in the late 1800s when Britain feared the strength of the French Navy.

This series of forts dotted along the Plymouth coastline are said to be the most expensive defence endeavour ever built during peacetime. The forts however, now referred to as 'Palmerston's follies', were never needed and never used for their original purpose. The threat from the French faded and new uses were eventually found for these historic sites.

The Breakwater Fort itself later became a signalling and semaphore station. In the 1890s, it was painted with a yellow and black chequered pattern which is still visible today, although now somewhat faded. It was also used as an anti-aircraft station during the Second World War.

Other than some monstrous spiny spider crabs, huge conger eels and a few wrasse, their wasnt a great deal to for us to see on the Breakwater Fort with the visibility being the worst of the 6 dives over the 3 days.

Day 3 - Friday

Dive 5 - HMS Scylla

The Scylla was the last Royal Navy Leander class frigate to be built at Devonport in 1968, and was decommissioned in 1993.

HMS Scylla was placed on the seabed in Whitsand Bay, South Cornwall on 27th March 2004 by the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth as an artificial reef and climbing frame for divers, supported by funding from the South West of England Regional Development Agency. The vessel had its top removed and holes cut into the side to allow divers to look into and explore the ships compartments.

Proclaimed to be Europe’s first artificial diving reef, the wreck lies upright on a sandy sea bed of about 23m, with a top depth of about 9m. She is 113m long and 13m wide.

The Scylla was indeed a fascinating wreck to dive and quite possibly now one of our favourite wrecks in UK waters (which is a bold statement given how much we love visiting Scapa Flow). It was teeming with both colour and life, and was easily penetrable from all sides.

A word of warning however that wrecks can be very dangerous places and this, like many others, has sadly claimed numerous lives, the last of which being 2021.

Dive 6 - SS James Eagan Layne

One of the most famous shipwrecks in the UK, the Liberty ship SS James Eagan Layne was beached in Whitsand Bay, Cornwall after being torpedoed off the Eddystone rock in March 1945.

The SS James Eagan Layne was consequently towed by Admiralty tugs towards Plymouth in an attempt to save as much cargo as possible, but on her way back in, the stern collapsed causing her to sink in Whitsand Bay where she now rests in an upright position on a sandy seabed pointing north towards the shore. 

After the James Eagan Lane initially sunk, both her masts and funnel could be seen sticking out of the water. These have since been removed and can currently be observed on the seabed towards her port side.  A vast majority of her cargo was removed before she sank however, but some can still be seen in parts of her 5 holds.

With the sun shining brightly, it was fantastic to see the surface rays glistening down between the remaining vertical hull beams, illuminating the iconic features of this magnificent wreck.

With a maximum depth of 24 metres but some areas at just 10 metres, James Eagan Layne is a perfect dive site for PADI Advanced Open Water divers and above. It’s also worth making sure that you have completed your PADI Wreck Diver Speciality to make sure you’re fully clued up on the risks of wreck diving and equipped with techniques for planning and preparing your trip.

Because the wreck sits on sand and attracts lots of marine life, it has a reef-life feel. This makes it a great visit for underwater photographers who will find plenty to look at and photograph. For macro photography fans, there is still plenty to see including sightings of nudibranchs and cup corals at the shallower depths.

As earlier briefed by the skipper, the James Eagan Lane was indeed found to be broken into several parts with many open interesting open areas to explore. Here we observed many spiny spider crabs, groups of spiny lobsters, edible crabs and an abundance of fish, but also most possibly the biggest common lobster we have ever seen, but not the one in the photo below.

In truth, we all had a fantastic time in Plymouth and will certainly be doing it again. Despite the lengthy drive, we found reasonably priced accommodation which was easily accessible with onsite parking making the transference of expensive gear, back and forth, pretty simple.

Additionally, we were lucky with the weather which certainly made the whole thing all the more enjoyable.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank In Deep Diving Centre, and to assure them that we definitely plan on coming back soon. As with all in our industry who provide us with a fantastic service, we will be adding them to our ‘SEPE Buddies’ section of the website, and please feel free to check out the Gallery for more photo’s of this amazing trip.

The UK has some of the most biodiverse waters on the planet, with some amazing things to see, additionally offering some unforgettable marine life interactions.

If you have enjoyed this blog and would be interested in one of our trips, or would like to learn to dive to a level where you can participate in these kinds of events, please do not hestitate to contact us.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and as always, safe diving.

Steve

Steven Earnshaw
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