Bideford, England, United Kingdom

Lundy Island Marine Reserve

Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel is one of the United Kingdom's premier dive destinations and was home to England's first Marine Nature Reserve, designated in 1986 and upgraded to a Marine Conservation Zone in 2010 and a No Take Zone since 2003. The granite island offers an extraordinary diversity of dive sites along its three-mile length, with vertical walls, kelp forests, gullies, reefs and shipwrecks all within short boat journeys. The waters surrounding Lundy are a meeting point of warmer southern Atlantic and colder northern currents, supporting a uniquely diverse marine life: jewel anemones in dazzling colour, plumose anemones, dead man's fingers, sponges, sunset cup corals, pink seafans, ross corals and rare branching sponges. Resident species include Atlantic grey seals that frequently approach divers, basking sharks in summer, lobsters, ballan wrasse, cuckoo wrasse, pollack, bib, conger eels and tompot blennies. Visibility commonly reaches 8 to 15 metres in summer, with water temperatures between 10 and 17 degrees Celsius. Boats run from Ilfracombe, Bideford and Clovelly.