Europe has seen it’s far share of deep pools – the 28m Submarine Escape Training Tank (S.E.T.T.) in the UK, 33m Nemo33 in Belgium and the 40m Y-40 in Italy. It has just been announced that the UK is getting a new 50m pool called the Blue Abyss which will make it the largest facility of it’s kind in the world! It will be located in outside London in Essex and is designed to be the world’s best underwater research, training and development facility and will cater for Scuba Divers, Freedivers and Commercial Divers.
It has also been confirmed that the European Space Agency will use the facility as a training site.
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. You can read more information about the project on their Facebook page.
Their FB page was create 1st of april, hope that’s not a joke
It’s not a joke – we personally know people involved in the project.
Good news but why so close to London?? Why not further North, maybe in the Midlands somewhere?? Everything is so metrocentric…. Nothing wrong with the land north of Watford…. in fact it’s more than likely to be cheaper to buy…. just saying like!!!
Really hope this is for real, having made the trek and dived Nemo33 in Brussels I wondered how long it’d be be we got one of our own in the UK.
David Jason was involved in what turned out to be a flop in the same area.the cost was to high in the hundreds of millions and no planning permissible n could be found d at any suitable site. What makes anyone think this!s project will go further than the printed word.
Good news for the SE of England that could pick up participation quite a bit. Let’s hope that it happens for real.
Fantastic news,a place to freedive near home.
Here we go, Blue Abyss are live and their Crowdfunding Campaign is taking off. Can’t wait to splash around in that pool just awesome!
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/blue-abyss
Just a note, the pool pic only goes to 40m? Hope they correct this!
Well spotted Adam – the graphic was a very early version before they announced the increase in depth.
Brexit will have a deep impact in such a project, expecially the Space Agency will have to review its assets and its priorities and locations