This is 99% Invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

There's an archipelago in the far west of the UK, and I mean far west.

Like, once you think you're in the west, like around Cornwall, keep going.

And then take a ferry, another three hours west, and you'll find yourself in a collection of islands called

the Isles of Silly. That's silly spelled S-C-I-L-L-Y, not silly, ha-ha. That's 99-P-I-I-P-I-P-I-P-I-P-I-P-RUcer, Kelly Prime. In fact, silly is not ha-ha at all. It's a place that's hard to wrap your mind around. The islands sit in the warm waters of

the Gulf Stream, so you'll find tropical plants like giant palms and birds of paradise,

all blooming up against the backdrop of the rugged North Atlantic. It's also historically,

one of the deadliest places in the UK to travel by sea.

These islands are plopped down in churning waters, with jagged rocks rising all around,

like the jaws of some sort of mythical sea creature.

In this past October, I found myself on a little boat called the Buccaneer right in the middle of it.

It's crazy, man. It's a crazy place.

There's just rocks everywhere. As you're going along, you don't realize we're passing rocks under the water all the time.

The Buccaneer belongs to a scuba diver named Todd Stevens.

Todd has been diving the shipwrecks around Silly for over two decades.

If you're into shipwrecks, it's really hard not to find one here.

At least 900 shipwrecks litter the coasts of Silly, probably more.

Sometimes ships will sink on top of other older shipwrecks, so it's difficult to say for sure.

Are there shipwrecks below us right now?

Yeah, yeah, we'd ask quite a few.

If you'd have been asking me that as we were just coming along Samaria shoreline, there's at least half a dozen along there.

...