Scuba Diving
If you are at Oxford and want to dive in the UK then OU Underwater Exploration Group is who you need to talk to. Our members span the whole range of diving experience from students who have never dived before to those who have been diving for years and dive using mixed gasses to depths of more than 60m. The club dives for many weekends and several weeks each year all over the UK doing a huge variety of dives including training, wrecks, reefs and even dives with seals! We have kit to lend to new members to get them started and will soon have a brand new boat to take on trips and to dive from. We also train our own members up as instructors to teach new divers.
Each Easter the club goes to Porthkerris cove in Cornwall for 10 days to introduce the novice divers to the sea for the first time. Many of the experienced members of the club also go, with 50 people on the trip this year.
The cove has a reef sticking out from the shore and this is an ideal place for new divers to do their first dives and see some great examples of British sea life. On a typical dive on the reef you will see lots of colouful fish, crabs, cuttlefish and if youÕre lucky even dogfish Ð a small but harmless shark.
The cove is very close to the Lizard, a line of rocks sticking out into the English Channel where there are many shipwrecks. Divers go out here in boats launched off the beach and many of the wrecks here are worth diving again and again. The biggest include the ÒMoheganÓ, a large ship which sank in 1898. The wreck is dominated by two enormous boilers over 4m in diameter which rear up from the sea bed. This is also an excellent dive to see dogfish, sea fans and the tiny nudibranchs which live on them.
There are also many wrecks from the two world wars nearby including the ÒRock Island BridgeÓ which is a great place to find lobsters and conger eels. These are 2-3m long with a set of sharp teeth and are not to be messed with!
By the end of the trip the new divers are qualified to dive in the UK and abroad. Everyone will have done 15 or 20 dives and will have had a great time, be thoroughly exhausted and wanting to go diving again as soon as they possibly can!
For further information about the club please contact: craig.wilson@pmb.ox.ac.uk.
6th May 2004