DIVE Magazine
DIVE Magazine is a British magazine devoted to scuba diving, published from London in England. It covers dive travel, training, equipment and marine life, and serves British divers through both a print edition and digital editions, with destination features drawn from waters around the United Kingdom and from diving locations worldwide. Over more than two decades in print, and through a period in which it reinvented itself as an international digital title before returning to a prominent print presence, it has become one of the most recognisable names in British diving publishing.
Origins and founding
DIVE was founded in 1995 by Graeme Gourlay, who remains its publisher and editor. Gourlay had been diving for more than thirty years when his biography was published on the magazine's own site, and he came to diving publishing after a period as news editor of The Sunday Times. That background in national newspaper journalism shaped the title from the start: it was conceived not simply as a club newsletter or a trade catalogue, but as a magazine written and edited to professional journalistic standards, with reported features, interviews and photography at its centre.
The mid-1990s were a period of growth for recreational scuba diving in Britain. Training agencies were bringing large numbers of new divers into the sport, charter boats and inland training sites served a busy domestic scene, and British divers were travelling in increasing numbers to the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and further afield. A magazine that could speak to that whole audience — beginners taking their first open-water dives, experienced wreck divers exploring British waters, and travelling divers planning holidays — had a clear place in the market, and DIVE established itself as the United Kingdom's leading scuba magazine for more than a decade in its early print form.
From British print title to digital pioneer
Like many specialist magazines, DIVE faced declining newsstand and subscription sales and a weakening advertising market in the years after the financial crisis of the late 2000s. Its response was unusually bold. Rather than simply adding a website to a print title, the publisher took the decision to turn DIVE into an international, free, digital-only magazine, reaching readers on computers, tablets and phones wherever they dived. The strategy was recognised within the publishing industry: a 2012 case study in InPublishing, the magazine for publishing professionals, described how DIVE had taken the plunge from UK-centric print to digital freedom, and the title was shortlisted for the Media Pioneers awards that year.
The digital strategy rested on principles of free access, ease of use across different devices, and a simple sign-up process based on a single registration. For a sport whose participants are scattered across coastal towns, inland clubs and expatriate communities around the world, that model made practical sense. A British diver living abroad, or a diver in another country interested in British-authored diving journalism, could read the same issue on the day it appeared, without waiting for an airmail copy or paying international subscription rates.
Return to print and the quarterly edition
DIVE subsequently returned to print alongside its digital presence, in a form that reflects how specialist magazine publishing has changed. Its flagship offer combines a print subscription with digital access, including an online archive of more than one hundred back issues. The print magazine is now published quarterly, produced as a substantial, high-quality publication with thick glossy pages — a format the publisher presents in coffee-table terms, suited to the large-format underwater photography that has always been central to diving magazines.
Recent quarterly issues illustrate the rhythm of the modern title. The Autumn 2026 issue, numbered Issue 43 in the current series, carried features from Roatán, Belize, Bonaire and Sinaloa, among other destinations. The seasonal naming of issues — Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn — underlines the quarterly cycle, and print runs are limited, with readers encouraged to subscribe or order before a stated deadline to guarantee a copy. Single-issue and subscription sales are handled through the magazine's own website, with worldwide delivery available at additional cost for international readers.
Travel and destination coverage
Dive travel is the backbone of the magazine. Destination features report on where to dive, what can be seen, the conditions a visiting diver should expect and the character of the places themselves, both above and below the surface. Coverage ranges widely: Red Sea resorts such as El Gouna in Egypt, where the editor has written about rediscovering uncrowded reefs and day-boat diving; Caribbean islands; Mexico and Belize in Central America; Malta and Gozo in the Mediterranean, noted for wreck diving; and Papua New Guinea and other Pacific destinations, among many others.
British and Irish waters also feature. The magazine reports on diving around the United Kingdom's coast, on marine life in British seas — including features such as its guide to basking sharks — and on conservation and community projects at home, such as Project Cornwall, which introduces young people to diving and the marine environment. That balance matters to its readership: for most British divers, local diving in colder, greener water, often on wrecks, is the sport they practise most weekends, while warm-water travel is the holiday highlight the magazine also serves.
Marine life, science and conservation
A substantial part of DIVE's output concerns the animals divers go underwater to see, and the science and conservation that surround them. Shark coverage is a recurring theme, from features on grey reef sharks in the Maldives and thresher sharks to quizzes and myth-busting pieces separating fact from fiction about sharks. The magazine reports on marine protected areas, such as Papua New Guinea's plans for a very large no-take sanctuary in the Coral Triangle, on citizen science initiatives, and on research stories ranging from fossil discoveries — including Britain's largest ichthyosaur find in Rutland — to studies of how divers interact with the underwater environment.
This strand of coverage reflects a wider shift in diving culture. Modern recreational divers are routinely expected to be ambassadors for the oceans they visit, and a magazine that once concentrated mainly on kit and destinations now also explains fisheries policy, marine reserves, plastic pollution and the effects of a changing climate on reefs and kelp forests. DIVE's briefing-style news reporting keeps those subjects in front of a general diving audience rather than confining them to scientific journals.
Training, skills and safety
For divers still building their experience, the magazine carries instructional material on learning to dive and on core skills, such as correct weighting — the unglamorous but essential matter of how much lead a diver needs to descend and hold a stop comfortably and safely. It also reports, in its news coverage, on accidents, inquests and official investigations involving divers around the world. Such reporting is a sober but important part of a diving magazine's work: the sport is adventurous but unforgiving of complacency, and honest coverage of what went wrong, alongside training guidance, helps readers dive more safely.
Equipment coverage runs alongside the instructional material. DIVE reviews and reports on new products, from dive computers and underwater camera systems — including mirrorless cameras and their housings — to communications devices that allow divers and surface crews to keep in touch. Underwater photography has its own dedicated strand, including the magazine's Big Shot photography competition and features profiling individual photographers and their work.
News, briefing and the website
Between quarterly print issues, the magazine's website carries a continuous flow of shorter journalism under headings such as Briefing, In Depth, Marine Life, Travel and Learning to Dive. Stories range from new product announcements by training agencies and manufacturers, to reports of sinkings planned as artificial reefs, records in freediving, and developments in dive destinations around the world. The site also runs regular quizzes on subjects from shark myths to coral and the ocean at night, an informal way of testing and building readers' knowledge, sometimes linked to subscription offers.
Book reviews form another regular element, covering natural history, ocean science and diving-related fiction and non-fiction, reviewed by the editor and contributors. Together, the website and the quarterly print magazine divide the work in a way now common among specialist titles: fast-moving news and interactive material online, and long, photographic features in print.
Readership and place in British diving
DIVE's readership is international, but its roots and viewpoint remain British. It competes in a small, well-defined field of English-language diving magazines, in which club publications, such as the magazine of the British Sub-Aqua Club, serve members, while independent commercial titles like DIVE address the whole diving public. Its longevity — published for more than twenty years, and by its own account for three decades since 1995 — gives it an archive that charts how the sport has changed: the spread of nitrox and technical diving, the digital revolution in underwater photography, the growth of liveaboard holidays, and the increasing centrality of conservation.
For readers in London, where the magazine is based, and across the United Kingdom, DIVE functions as both a practical resource and a record of a shared pursuit. Its combination of destination reporting, equipment coverage, marine science and photography, edited by a founder who has remained at the helm since 1995, makes it a distinctive and durable part of British diving culture.
