On the outer side of Britain’s Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast, is the Longstone lighthouse, which was home in 1838 to a reluctant heroine called Grace Darling. She was the lighthouse keeper’s daugher, and at the age of just 22, she jumped into a rowing boat in the midst of a violent storm and successfully saved nine people from drowning after a paddlesteamer ran aground in the night.
Now, 186 years later, I’m looking out at the same North Sea she faced – whitecaps crashing over rocks, herring gulls circling overhead – with an equally bashful north-eastern champion. Nic Emery is co-founder of Fifth Point Diving, the first dive shop in Britain to be classed as an eco-centre by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (Padi) and owner of the Honest Diver, an online business that sells eco-friendly scuba kit, but what she is fighting to save is the sea itself.
