Chausey Islands & Granville

Diving at Chausey is boat diving from the port of Granville. Plongée Chausey Loisirs runs fast RIBs out to the archipelago and works a pool of around thirty sites, and the Club Subaquatique Hippocampe, a members' club based at Granville, keeps its own site list, from Le Founet and Videcoq to the Anvers wreck. The same stretch of the Emerald Coast runs on from the Bay of Saint-Malo past Chausey to Jersey, with the Minquiers reef at its heart. Night dives are offered as well as day trips. The tide governs the day: the range reaches 14 m at the equinox springs, and currents sweep the islands continuously.

Underwater the archipelago is granite and steel. Drop-offs are hung with laminaria kelp, and wrecks, some of them a century old, lie out in open water. The Anvers sits to the east of the islands and the Voilier rests on sand at 38 m south of the Sound, beside a drop-off; the Fetlar, between 20 and 30 m, lies out near the Minquiers. The fish are pollack, bass, ballan and cuckoo wrasse, mackerel and bream, with cuttlefish, octopus, lobster, spider crabs and crawfish among them. The water is cold, from about 9 °C in February to 19 °C in late August.

The area suits divers already comfortable in cold, moving water and keen on wrecks. French Level 1 divers have the Anvers, while the Fetlar and the Voilier lie between 20 and 38 m. For a British take on Channel wreck diving, with a training shore site in Chesil Cove, Weymouth & Portland lies across the water on the Dorset coast.