Freediving Scotland
Explore your adventure
We are pioneers of free diving tours in Scotland long before it became fashionable! We used to have a specific free-diving itinerary for individuals to book on but it was hard to run a specific date for it. Now we have incorporated free diving into all our tours and we have many free divers come on our trips. In addition, we have free diving groups charter us for bespoke itineraries. To give you a flavour of some of the places and adventures we are able to facilitate then please read below.
Tours can be arranged at any time of year, but the more notice the better.
We have hard drives full of footage but here’s a flavour of our trips from an older promo video.
Bubble Cave
Yeoooow! Maybe the most sought after and cool location we’ve ever visited. It’s a secret spot and one that is very far from anywhere, and needs very settled weather and tidal conditions. This one would be strictly for a week long tour when we are based from the Isle of Coll or Barra during the summer.
The cave is like an underwater Fingal’s Cave with similar basalt columns and shape. The cave does go quite far in and we have also explored it scuba diving. The very top of the cave has an opening which at low tide allows an air pocket to develop. However, when the tide comes in then the air pocket forms a bubble inside the cave. After a short horizontal swim of approx 10m and 4m depth, you reach the air pocket which has plenty room for half a dozen people. The really interesting thing here is when there is a small swell the pressure in the air pocket increases, meaning the moisture in the air condenses and forms a mist. When the swell moves out, the pressure reduces and the mist disappears. Spooky! Something we’ve only witnessed in the tropics!
In this picture, Shane used a large offboard underwater light to illuminate the cave and free diver, whilst using the ambient light from outside to give an ethereal look.
You would be lucky to get here, but put the right plans in place and fingers crossed the weather plays ball.
Fingal’s Cave – Isle of Staffa
Another sought after location. Fit freedivers absolutely love this place and hosting a group like this means we show you all the best spots. You can dive down into the cave and gullies, through all three main caves and the tunnel between the island. We do visit here on most of our multi-day tours, but it’s much harder to get the right conditions on just a day tour. You’ll find lots of info on our other tour pages & blog.
Soft Coral Reefs
We do get a lot of current around the islands, which can make staying in one place tricky. However, that also means there is a huge diversity of marine life to see. Rocky reefs are covered in soft corals and anemones – perhaps something you would associate with the tropics rather than Scotland. Mostly, they occur from 4-5m and deeper so freedivers are able to get the view that snorkelers cannot.
Freediving in the Kelp Forest
A regular activity for us as we take many snorkeling tours around the vibrant and diverse kelp forest. The benefit of free diving is that you can dive down beneath the kelp canopy and find all sorts of swim throughs, tunnels and caves. We know a number of spots like this that we visit on our normal itineraries and take the experienced swimmers there.
Free diving with Grey Seals
Free diving here is not about line diving and hitting big depths. Having the skills to allow dynamic movement, fitness for coastal swimming and a reasonable breath hold is much more practical.
Interacting with grey seals is one of the most rewarding things we do. Having a wild animal choose to play with you is an amazing experience, but it can take patience and good watermanship to foster an encounter, which are always on the seals terms. We’ll give you some tips on doing this and visit seal colonies at optimal times. Scotland has around 1/3 of the worlds population of grey seals and have some huge colonies around the islands.
Freediving Shipwrecks
We have lots of wrecks nearby that are regularly visited by divers. Many are deep and in areas of current which don’t make them suitable for freediving. There are a few shallow ones we occasionally visit on our multi-day tours from Coll, along with our 5 day tours from Oban. Our favourite lies on the south coast of Mull in a location with usually good visibility. There are numerous swim throughs and lots of big fish. The stern is the most intact with a huge propellor at around 8m. A fantastic free-dive spot.
Freediving with Basking Sharks
The big goal for many people travelling with us. However, there is a lot that goes into this kind of experience. To start with we don’t allow free diving with basking sharks, all interactions are surface based only. If you splash and dive, the sharks move away and you don’t foster a good encounter. We’ll talk about techniques at the time but the best thing is to move into position and stay still.
Planning a trip to see the sharks is tricky as their whereabouts both geographically and depth in the water column is highly variable. We run our dedicated tours at a certain time of year which gives you statistically higher chances but it also means other features are too far away for us. Like everything in life, there are some compromises to make. We can can make a bespoke freediving package based around our week tour that you can see here. Otherwise, outside of the peak time, we can run lots of different freedive trips and then head out for a prospective look for sharks on a calm weather day.
Freediving Easdale Quarry
Well known locally and maybe within the scene around Scotland but not so much elsewhere. There are some flooded slate quarries on an island close to Oban, one of which has a particularly blue coloured water and usually clear conditions. Whilst there isn’t much life in there, it’s a great adventure and perfect for free dive training. We usually take the van down and catch the wee ferry across, which adds to the adventure. We also visit during our in-house snorkel training course.
It isn’t the only quarry like this in the area, and we do have some that we visit regularly from the boat that we don’t publicise due to site sensitivity.
Manta Boarding
A bit of fun! We do have a manta board that we only bring out so often. To be honest, it works well in the tropics and warm water, but if you’re hardy and keen to give it a try on a bespoke tour then we can add it in. Ideally, we do it in calm water somewhere shallow above sand and keep the speed to bare minimum. One to discuss with us if you’re keen to give it a try!
Yoga
We are lucky to have our own in-house yoga instructor and we have run free diving with yoga itineraries in the past. This picture was from the last day of our week where we booked a hall space prior to freediving the Easdale quarries seen above. Afterwards, we grabbed some lunch & coffees from the outdoor cafe. It was a fantastic day! We may look to do this as an individually bookable tour in the future but we can also consider it for bespoke itineraries.
Waterfall & Arches
Like our spring five day tour we find this day popular with our freediving groups. Usually we’ll hit up the waterfall, arches and wreck on one day as they are reasonably close together. It’s a really cool coastal adventure day!
The kelp forest snorkel & dive is nice and near the waterfall, then we head up to play in the waterfall pool and cascades. The arches we swim into experience the huge caverns & keyhole – a cool adventure. One you’ll want your crocs though, if wearing socks.
Night Freediving
Another one of our pioneering trips. We have a 100,000 lumen floodlights system we hang off the boat to illuminate sites. We do it over shipwrecks for divers, around piers, in calm / quiet spots for swimmers & snorkelers along with drifting in deep water to do blackwater diving (think free diving into the abyss with a distant light).
Our long summer nights exclude it from summer tours, but it works well at the end of the season around Sept/Oct when the water is at it’s warmest but not too late till darkness.
It’s a mega experience and if the conditions all come together, people have said it’s been the most favourite thing they’ve ever done. The light can attract huge shoals of fish and the ethereal light against a structure is like something from a movie. One to discuss with us!
