Cant see the wreck for the fish

The Channel Islands offer superior British diving with a twist - great visibility and species of marine creatures you'll never find on the mainland.

I never had any time for that old divers’ cliché, ‘You can’t see the wreck for the fish’. It sounded like meaningless tosh, until the day I visited the wreck of the Hinrich Hey on a day trip out of Jersey. As I made my way down the shot-line, all I could see was a pulsating mass of silver flickering in the half-light. Either I was looking at a ludicrously big school of bib, or someone had given me a generous fill of nitrous oxide.

I knew, or at least hoped, that the wreck of a German Second World War escort ship was somewhere below me, but even with decent light and 15m visibility there was room for doubt. As I touched down on the pebble sea bed at 35m, the school of bib parted (thousands of suspicious eyes) and I realised I had narrowly missed the wreck. Looking up past the large school, the unmistakeable profile of a fully intact, 88mm gun was silhouetted against the water.

The Hinrich Hey often provides the climax to a week’s diving out of Jersey. Located between the Channel Islands and St Malo on the north coast of Brittany, it’s a classic Channel wreck, bristling with anti-aircraft guns and loaded with atmosphere. The stern section lies to port, while the bow section leans to starboard, giving the impression that the wreck has been twisted and pulled apart like a Christmas cracker.

A V210 escort ship, the Hinrich Hey is thought to have been sunk by Canadian torpedo boats while it was accompanying a convoy. The violence of the strike is evident more than 60 years after the event: the ship was broken in two at the engine room. Somehow, both boilers escaped the worst of the explosion and today they sit perfectly upright, harbouring some skittish conger.

Despite the distractions of the wreck’s residents, the overwhelming impression is of a violent sinking, frozen in time. Packets of ammunition lie scattered on the sea bed as if they had been dropped yesterday; the guns still point upwards at a long-departed enemy.

There are many excellent wreck dives in the waters around the Channel Islands, though dives have to be carefully planned. The area has one of the world’s greatest tidal movements, as much as 12m on an extreme spring. This may be good news for drift divers, but you definitely need to keep an eye on the clock, even when you’re diving on a neap.

A closer option for divers based in Jersey is the wreck La Mauve, a barge which was deliberately sunk in 1993. What it lacks in history, it makes up for in sheer diveability: it is still fully intact, sits perfectly upright at 18–24m and usually has decent visibility. I watched a group of diving students carrying out their first wreck dive here, and they were clearly enjoying the experience.

The barge’s main features are easily recognisable, and there is a resident school of pouting which take great pleasure in swirling around its visitors. This is one of those dive sites that drive underwater photographers to distraction – do you go for a wide-angle lens and try to capture the funnel or mast, or are you tempted by the tompot blennies which dart around the barnacle-encrusted structure? In either case, it’s a perfect nitrox wreck.

Jersey’s best wreck dive is the SS Heron, a cargo ship which sank in 1961 on Paternoster Reef and remained undiscovered until local wreck historian John Ovenden dived it in 2002. The wreck sits perfectly upright at 25–30m and is relatively easy to penetrate. There are sinks and black tiles in the galley, and green light pours through a stairwell that leads up to the bridge. The stern section of the wreck is somewhat less interesting, though a lone cuttlefish hovered warily as we swam past.

For those who want to keep their diving as simple as possible, Jersey has much to offer. My visit took place late in the season, when water temperatures were so high that I left my hood and gloves in the dive bag. I based myself on the northern side of the island, next to what for many is Jersey’s diving capital – Bouley Bay. It’s a classic shore dive in the tradition of Cornwall’s Lamorna Cove, and it comes with the added convenience of a friendly dive centre and a decent hotel right next to the water.

Home to an impressive array of marine life, the bay comprises a sloping pebble beach which leads to a band of seaweed and kelp before giving way to shingle and sand. It’s possible to enter the water from either the beach, the slipway or the steps on the harbour wall.

Bouley Bay was in the process of being stirred up by some forceful swell when I arrived, but I had some enjoyable dives from the slip and the harbour wall. There were plenty of ballan wrasse flitting around the seaweed, many of which had parasitic crustaceans attached to their bodies. Also disguised in the coils of weed was a greater pipefish, a relative of the seahorse, which we later saw being devoured by a cormorant.

The shingle beyond the kelp is an even more productive environment, and is dominated by sand-dwelling predators. We saw female dragonets, gobies and dozens of cuttlefish, which raised their tentacles in a defensive posture whenever we ventured too close. Whether their behaviour is predicated by the approach of a diver or their own personalities is near-impossible to say, but each cuttlefish seemed to have its own way of responding to the presence of divers. Some shot away, inking frenziedly; others stood their ground with tentacles raised, while several displayed a casual insouciance and went about their business.

Around the rocks we found lobster, tompot blennies and omers, relatives of the abalone, which on Jersey exist on the northern fringes of their range (they are not found on the UK mainland). Locals still gather them by hand on low tides, though judging by the various faces pulled when I asked what they were like to eat, these rubbery creatures are an acquired taste.

Another southern species not found on mainland Britain is the banded anemone prawn, a translucent, blue beauty which lives in the green tentacles of the snakelocks anemone. They make a colourful couple, precisely the sort of attractive symbiosis over which macro photographers drool.

Bouley Bay has everything: a top-notch shore dive, a quiet harbour for hardboats, a hotel, a dive centre and, perhaps most important of all, a pub – The Black Dog. Named after a mythical beast which is supposed to haunt the north coast, you’ll find lots of friendly local divers here. As for the hound, I’m told the story was spread by smugglers who wanted to keep people away from the bay at night.
Channel Island diving is notable for the clarity of the water. Around Jersey, visibility was around 10–12m and the water had a green hue. The clearest water is reputedly found around the island of Sark, which I visited with local hardboat skipper Jim O’Connor, on board the Magic. Sark is only 14 miles from Jersey, but you’ll find the dive sites are quite different.

Blessed with a blue sky and a flat sea, we approached the island of Brecqhou, famed as the home of the reclusive billionaire businessmen, the Barclay brothers. The surface of the water was like glass as I strode off the back of the boat at a site known as Guilemesse, a series of kelp-covered boulders and gullies which lead into the depths. It is the proximity of this deep water which gives the sites at Sark their energy. The water is a beautiful pale blue, visibility often reaches 20m and there are plenty of fish. Thanks to upwellings, it was 2ºC cooler than Jersey, but that still made it a balmy 17ºC at the surface.
Although you can see grey mullet and bass hunting close to the surface, the site’s most notable creatures are the ultra-tame cuckoo wrasse. They were inordinately fond of my buddy and guide Sue Daly, a local diver who has filmed them for her own documentaries and various BBC productions. Fascinated by her blonde hair, the wrasse approached right up to her mask.

Below 30m, we found a rare, white sea fan. At first, I thought the coral had been bleached as a result of expelling its symbiotic algae under some sort of environmental stress. In fact, it’s another southern oddity, an out-of-place coral which managed to get a foothold in this northern outpost. It sat next to a colony of the northern European sea fan Eunicella verrucosa with its distinctive pinkish-gold skeleton and polyps. Later, on the northeast side of a rock known as L’Etac, I found some of the largest fan corals I have ever come across in UK waters. They grew in great clusters in the rocky gulleys and walls, feasting on nutrients delivered by the tide.

Ultimately it is the tide, the water, which makes Channel Islands diving so special. The combination of extreme tides, great visibility and warm temperatures has created an alternative British diving environment packed with oddities and excitement. As they say, not so far away across the Bay of St Malo, ‘Vive la difference’!

Jersey’s cream: top wrecks

SS Heron: The tomatoes inside this recently discovered cargo ship may have rotted long ago, but the structure is near-pristine and offers some enjoyable swim-throughs.

SS Schokland: This Dutch freighter was used to ferry German troops between France and the Channel Islands. It sank, with the loss of 136 lives, after ploughing into the reef a mile off Jersey’s south coast in 1943. The holds contain sacks of cement and iron girders, while the exterior is covered in corals and visited by a big shoal of pouting.

La Mauve: Beating Plymouth’s Scylla by almost a decade, this maintenance barge was deliberately sunk to create an artificial reef off the north coast in 1993. At just 22m in length, this is an ideal ‘first’ wreck, and the school of pouting are very diver-friendly. Maximum depth 25m.

Armed trawler: Just a few miles out of St Helier, this Second World War German patrol boat was sunk by Allied aircraft during the Second World War occupation of the island. It lies between 18–28m and is reputedly home to a large conger eel.

SS Kromwyk: This armed coaster sits upside-down on a popular reef with its propellers still in place. As popular for the scenic element as much as the wreck, the challenge here is to find the gun, which lies in the sea bed just off the bow.

NEED TO KNOW

Getting there: DIVE travelled with Condor Ferries, www.condorferries.com which operates a service from Poole, Dorset to St Helier in Jersey. Prices for a foot passenger start from £54, or £259 if you want to bring a car (prices differ depending on your dates of travel). For reservations, telephone 0845 345 2000.

Hotel: If you want to be close to the action, the Water’s Edge Hotel in Bouley Bay is your best bet. Rooms cost between £40 and £61 per person a night, depending on the season. Phone 01534 862777 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Bouley Bay Dive Centre: tel 01534 866990, www.scubadivingjersey.com

Charter boat: Magic, 01534 482013, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

DVD: Reefs and Wrecks – A Further Exploration of Marine Life in the Channel Islands, £14. Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to buy a copy.

Tourist Board: For general enquiries or to find a convenient B&B, contact the Jersey Tourism office in St Helier on 01534 500700.