About Amphibian

ABOUT AMPHIBIANLONDON'S FRIENDLIEST DIVE CENTRE

What Makes Amphibian Different From The Rest?

Since 1981 Amphibian Scuba has led the way in London for UK and overseas divers a like. Staffed by passionate, experienced members of staff, Amphibian is London’s premier one-stop dive centre. Offering an accountable in-house service centre for cylinders and all brands of regulators, stocking the latest dive equipment from the leading brands, on site gas fills, and both overseas and UK dive trips.

We are also London’s newest PADI 5 Star Dive Centre. As a PADI 5 Star Centre we are known to deliver exceptional quality training.  We are not a certification factory, we are here to teach you to dive not just tick a box. We are also a PADI Approved Youth Training Centre, meaning we meet the highest standards for running programs for families, Schools, and Youth Groups.

Ultimately we put the customer first and do our best to give the right advice to everyone who walks through the door or contacts us by phone, email, Facebook, etc.

We are not a centre that concentrates purely on volume or profit, our focus is on delivering a highly knowledgeable, quality, personal service, giving you the right advice to help you make the right purchasing and training decisions to reach your ultimate in-water goals. We are not a certification factory, offering cheap courses to tick a box, we teach our divers to dive!

Amphibian is a family business and has been helping people realise their underwater dreams and ambitions for over 15 years. We have succeeded due to an amazing team of enthusiastic instructors and shop staff who all share the passion for exploring the oceans.

We look forward to seeing you!!

 

Our History

Amphibian Sports was originally started by Ali MacCleod and Peter Hines back in 1981. Here is an article that Ali wrote for us taking us through the shop’s history in brief…

“Amphibian Sports was started completely from scratch; we were just keen divers who felt there was a need for a proper dive shop in South London, catering for all the local BSAC clubs.  The original rental for the shop, just the single window – half the size it is now, was £1500 per year. We put up simple shelves and bought our first stock on a cash basis. Both Pete and I  had full times jobs so Sally my wife, who was also a keen diver, agreed to run the shop.

At the start, we bought an ancient Williams and James compressor and started making the rounds of all our local dive clubs and generally making ourselves known from the beginning. our catchphrase was ‘South London Friendly Dive Shop’, though by our regulars as ‘Amphibian Sharks’!

We were told by everyone in the trade that we were mad to try and start a dive shop. ‘It’s too cutthroat, you will never survive’ but the truth was that we steadily increased our turnover over the next ten years until it became a substantial business.

After the first few years, Pete Hines and I dropped out of the business which was then expanded by Sally, and subsequently, Drew Watson also became a partner.

In 1990, when the last depression happened, Sally and Drew decided to cut back on national sales to concentrate on local clubs again and the shop continued to be a profitable concern, albeit on a slightly smaller scale.

In 1994 Sally retired from the business which was taken over by Drew who also retired a few years later when it was taken over by Bob Lenham.

We are very happy that Amphibian Sports is still being run as a successful dive shop so many years after it first started and wish you every success for the future.”

Ali Macleod 2010

After Bob Lenham had run the shop for another few years, Bob sold the shop to Paul Toomer of (Diving Matrix/RAID) then after a couple of years, Bob bought the shop back with James Deane. They worked together for five years when Bob sold the shop to James so he could do more diving around the south coast.

Sadly Bob went missing during a dive in 2009 on the Empire Javelin and was never found. He was a big part of our life. He had worked with James for 11 years and taught him all he knew about the diving industry, servicing etc. James continued to run Amphibian with passion and dedication, making great friends throughout the UK diving industry for a further decade.

In February 2019 James sold Amphibian Sports to Ian and Lynne Clafton, owners of Aquanaut Scuba in Kingston. Along with their management team of Matt and Andy, as well as James, helping out from time to time, we are excited to build on the reputation built over years of hard work and dedication to the UK diving industry and build the new Amphibian Scuba into a truly one-stop shop for all divers and making even more friends along the way.

Thanks for reading,

Safe diving.