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Blue Abyss side schematic of 50m pool

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go Freediving can exclusively reveal news that a 50m deep dive pool is planned for the UK. Blue Abyss is designed to be the world’s best underwater research, training and development facility and be open all year round for divers and the business world. This is a total game changer for freediving in the UK as it will extend our season by six months and give us 50m of depth in the most controlled conditions possible.

Located in Essex, it will cater for Scuba divers, freedivers and commercial divers. The 50m deep dive pool will be a Space agency training facility and a location for filmmaking, diving related equipment testing and search and rescue evaluation. Also onsite will be a hypberbaric facility for both diving and medical use.

The biggest diving pool in the world

And in terms of sheer size, Blue Abyss will dwarf the two current deepest pools in Europe, Y40 and Nemo 33, with a depth of 50m and a surface area of 50m by 35m.

Blue Abyss size comparison with Nemo 33 and Y40

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There will be a beach style entry as well as stepped entries, multi levels and cave simulations. The lighting set up can also simulate total darkness at any depth and objects can easily be placed in the pool for specialist training, photo shoots or fun. Lines can easily be set for freedivers to any depth and there will be at least two traditional pool lanes of 50m length and 2m depth for dynamic as well as a shallow area for static.

The entire site housing the 50m dive pool will be built using green building design and will also house a hotel and other businesses within the park.

Freediving consultant for Blue Abyss

Emma Farrell from Go Freediving has been brought onboard as a consultant to ensure that the facility has everything a freediver would want, from the perspective of recreational diving, courses and competitions.

‘I’ve been talking to the creator of Blue Abyss for a while now about how the facility could attract freedivers from around the world’ says Emma. ‘As they are still at the stage where tweaks can be made to the design, the 50m deep pool will now be able to cater for international freediving competitions, as well as be a world class destination for freediving training and recreational diving.’

‘I started my freediving career teaching at the SETT tank in 2003 which was 30m deep. After it closed to the public I talked to many people about projects to build deep pools in the UK but none of them got past the planning stage. When Blue Abyss asked me this week if I would be happy for the depth to be increased from 42m to 50m I was over the moon. I’m incredibly excited to be able to bring my expertise to this incredible project and make Blue Abyss the most exciting inland dive location in the world.’

Funding for Blue Abyss

Blue Abyss has all the funding for the project in place and have just entered a Richard Branson backed competition to complete the final deep ground survey and want your vote! To help fast track this incredible project, please vote by clicking here!

And keep an eye out here for new updates to this unique project!

Emma Farrell has been freediving since 2000, teaching freediving since 2003 and is the UK’s only Instructor Trainer with AIDA, RAID and SSI. A founding member of the AIDA education commission, she has written courses that are now taught internationally, as well as her own specialist courses, magazine articles and the beautiful book One Breath, a Reflection on Freediving. She has appeared numerous times on television promoting freediving, most notably teaching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingtsall how to freedive for the River Cottage television series. She is a specialist yoga teacher and has taught gold medal winning Olympic athletes across two disciplines how to improve their performance using her unique programme of freediving and yoga techniques. Read more about Emma here.