Suffolk coast.
Suffolk's coast faces a shallow North Sea seabed of gravel, sand and mud, with sandbanks parallel to the shore and inshore water that is often thick with suspended sediment. Diving here is largely on wrecks, including several little-dived wrecks in about 30–50 m off Lowestoft. The coast is best known for Dunwich, a medieval port largely lost to the sea, whose ruins lie in 3–10 m just off the present shore.
What's down there.
- Ruins of drowned medieval Dunwich (churches, a friary and other buildings) in 3–10 m just offshore
- The Dunwich Bank wreck, probably a 16th-century armed ship with bronze guns, in 10–12 m about 725 m offshore (licensed divers only)
- Many little-dived wrecks off Lowestoft, including Second World War losses in about 30–50 m
- Sandbanks such as Sizewell Bank and Aldeburgh Napes running parallel to the shore
- Lobsters and edible crabs
- Bass, cod and whiting
- Thornback rays and smooth-hounds
- Dover sole, lemon sole and sand eels
- Small-spotted catsharks
- Starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and burrowing anemones
- Harbour porpoises and common seals
Dunwich ruins 3–10 m; inshore waters mostly under 20 m; offshore wrecks off Lowestoft about 30–50 m.
Fine sediment, moved by tidal streams and storms, often makes inshore visibility poor: at Dunwich it is generally nil, only rarely reaching 2 m at the seabed, and is reported to be best towards the end of a spell of neap tides. Tidal streams are strong, so dives are planned around the short slack-water periods, which come roughly every six hours. Inshore waters are mostly less than 20 m deep, reaching about 30 m further out. Sea temperatures average about 16–18°C in August and September and about 15°C in October. Local clubs dive from about May to September or October, around Lowestoft, Southwold and Felixstowe, and also travel to the Norfolk coast. The Dunwich Bank wreck, designated in 1994, is the only wreck off Suffolk protected under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973: diving to explore it without a licence from the Secretary of State is an offence. Some military wrecks, such as the destroyer HMS Exmoor off Lowestoft, are protected places under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, where divers may look but must not touch or enter. The Orford Inshore MCZ, about 14 km off the Alde–Ore estuary, was designated in May 2019 to protect subtidal mixed sediments.
How it got there.
Dunwich was one of the largest ports in eastern England in the Middle Ages, covering about 1.8 km². Storms from 1286 onwards and centuries of erosion took most of the town into the sea; All Saints' church fell into the sea between 1904 and 1919. From 1972 divers led by Stuart Bacon of Suffolk Underwater Studies found church ruins offshore, sometimes working by touch in almost nil visibility, and University of Southampton surveys from 2008 used sonar and acoustic imaging to map churches, Blackfriars friary and other buildings on the seabed.
4 dives.
From the log — the dates follow the pattern I dived, so read them as representative rather than exact.