Vestmanna Sea Caves

Vestmanna · Streymoy · Faroe Islands

The Vestmanna bird cliffs on the island of Streymoy are the Faroe Islands' most famous natural spectacle: 400 metres of sheer basalt rising from the North Atlantic, home to hundreds of thousands of nesting seabirds. Tourist boats motor beneath the cliffs in summer, pointing cameras at puffins and guillemots lining every ledge. What the tourists do not see is what lies at water level and below: a series of enormous sea caves carved into the basalt by millennia of Atlantic storms, extending deep into the cliff face in chambers large enough to park a house inside. I had arranged a private boat from Vestmanna harbour, crewed by a local fisherman who knew the coastline intimately. The morning was rare: dead calm, the Atlantic a flat grey mirror, no swell. These conditions happen perhaps twenty days a year in the Faroes, and without them, diving the caves is not feasible. We motored along the cliff base, the rock towering above us in columnar basalt formations that looked like a giant's organ pipes. Fulmars and kittiwakes wheeled overhead, and I could smell the guano and the salt and the damp rock. The first cave was an arched opening perhaps ten metres wide and eight metres tall, the basalt dark and wet. I rolled off the boat and descended immediately. The water was eight degrees, biting through my drysuit at the wrists and neck seal. Inside the cave the light shifted from green to grey to near-darkness as I finned deeper. The walls were basalt hexagonal columns broken and tumbled, their surfaces colonised by breadcrumb sponge in orange patches and dahlia anemones in deep crimson. Kelp grew where light reached, the fronds waving in the gentle surge that even on a calm day penetrates the caves.