We welcome qualified divers from all agencies. Many of our members trained with PADI, and continued their training with our BSAC instructors. While it’s not compulsory, we recommend qualifying to Sports Diver grade to benefit from the maximum depths that allow you to enjoy our local wrecks and reefs. The reefs off the Brighton coast host a huge variety of congers, crabs, fish and rays at a maximum depth of 17 metres, while most of the wrecks are deeper than 20 metres. The majority of our trips are within Sports Diver range, to a maximum of 35 meters.
The Diving Officer will advise you of what your qualification is equivalent to, and which skills development training you may need to be ready to dive with the club.
Get ready to dive
If you are recently qualified diver, or haven’t been diving for a while, you may need some refresher training in the pool. You may also need to build experience with your new equipment in sheltered water with our qualified instructors, before taking to UK waters. We run our pool sessions and training over the winter from November to March. We also offer two days of skills development in a sheltered water environment, before starting the dive season in the Spring. Experienced divers with their own equipment may only need a shake-down dive to get started.
Why join Sussex Diving Club?
We go diving! Last season we made over 60 diving trips out to our favourite local Brighton dive sites. We have a busy diving calendar including mid-week dives after work. Ropes off around 6pm and return to Brighton Marina around 8.30pm and go for a social drink in a local pub. All through the summer we run two dives each on Saturdays and Sundays. Lots of opportunity for divers of all grades to enjoy the wildlife or explore some metal.
If you’re fairly new qualified diver there are a lot of advantages to joining a local club. We are a friendly crowd and welcome new people to come along and meet us. We have a boat permanently moored in Brighton Marina and this is where most of our dives are based from. The boats are both fast RIBs and have an operating range of up to 15 nautical miles from the Brighton Marina entrance.
What equipment do I need?
We are a club, not a commercial operation, so we do not have equipment for hire. You will need to supply your own full set of equipment starting with drysuit, BCD jacket, regulators and cylinders, as well as other safety items such as a DSMB and torch. We do own our our compressor, and all air fills are free to members.
What will it cost?
Membership of Sussex Diving Club is £210 for the year. You can either pay by standing order at £21 a month (over 10 months) or in one lump sum. This covers our mooring fees, boat maintenance and provision of an air compressor so you can get free fills
You will also need annual membership to BSAC which is £60.50 (or less, higher qualified divers and Instructors pay a reduced rate), this is payable by Direct Debit to BSAC, the Direct Debit mandate is part of the membership form which we will ask you to complete and sign.
The cost of diving from our RIBs which are permanently moored in Brighton Marina is £22.50 per dive.
What will I see?
Brighton has an awful lot to offer to suit a wide range of interests. There are a number of inshore reefs, all with a wide variety of marine life. Over the past few years we have been working with the Sussex Seasearch project to survey and record all the different species of fish, crustacea, echinods, molluscs and the like, together with the habitat details. If you’re interested in underwater conservation then take a look at the Seasearch web site.
Tides off Brighton run at about 1 knot. This is fast enough to make for interesting drift dives, but slow enough to be manageable if you want to stop and look at something interesting.
But what Brighton is really good for is the wrecks. The English Channel offers some of the best wreck diving in the world, with hundreds of large shipwrecks in diveable depths. Off Brighton alone there are over 50 shipwrecks within 15 miles of the marina entrance. Apart from the thrill of diving the wrecks themselves, they also form huge artificial reefs which are havens for a wide variety of marine life.
Expeditions
Members arrange diving trips to some of the best sites in the UK and around the world. In previous years we have chartered a live-aboard dive boat from Oban on the West Coast to Firth of Forth on the East coast. We had an expedition to Norway and then later in the same year an expedition to Northern France. We have been to Cuba, Egypt, Mexico, Grenada and Dubrovnik.
The Club UK holiday is usually arranged some time over the summer months. In recent years we have visited Devon, Cornwall, Pembrokeshire, Dorset, the Farne Islands and St Abbs.