Saving the seas one dive at a time in Northumberland

We dip beneath the North Sea waves with Britain’s first eco-dive centre, to see how it is inspiring divers to help clean up the seas they love

On the outer side of Britain’s Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast, is the Longstone lighthouse, which was home in 1838 to a reluctant heroine called Grace Darling. She was the lighthouse keeper’s daugher, and at the age of just 22, she jumped into a rowing boat in the midst of a violent storm and successfully saved nine people from drowning after a paddlesteamer ran aground in the night.

Now, 186 years later, I’m looking out at the same North Sea she faced – whitecaps crashing over rocks, herring gulls circling overhead – with an equally bashful north-eastern champion. Nic Emery is co-founder of Fifth Point Diving, the first dive shop in Britain to be classed as an eco-centre by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (Padi) and owner of the Honest Diver, an online business that sells eco-friendly scuba kit, but what she is fighting to save is the sea itself.

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