Western Ecology Tour: Notes from the Field – Pembrokeshire

Scubaverse blogger, Donovan Lewis, is currently on the Western Ecology Tour. The aim of the expedition is to travel to the northern reaches of Scotland, along the West Coast to the Llŷn Peninsula in North Wales, and finally onto Pembrokeshire, diving the best the west has to offer. The expedition is looking to live life in a minimalist way, camping and cooking out in the open air.

The teams aim is not just to dive sites, but to tackle conservation issues and shed light on projects up and down the UK, they have three projects which the trip will be focusing on. These projects include the Shark & Skate Citizen Science Scotland, Project Seagrass, and Neptune’s Army of Rubbish Cleaners (NARC). The team will be accompanied with a Biologist or expert that works on each of the 3 projects to aid and guide the team, but also help shed extra light on the critical conservation work being carried out.

Here are Donovan’s notes from the third and final leg of the trip:

Hello once more the final field report from expedition WET, as the expedition reach es its final leg its amazing to see how much we’ve done as a team. In our final leg we we’re in Pembrokeshire where we were covering NARC (Neptune’s Army of Rubbish Cleaners) with Lloyd Jones.

Our first dive was at Hobbs Point at Pembroke Dock. This dive was a sad one, NARC had been called to the area due to a report of several oil drums and other rubbish that had been thrown in the water. We were able to lift four oil drums, nets, a scooter, and much more. There was also a huge amount of fishing gear tangling around the kelp and seabed and even when we were in the water there were anglers on the wall above the dive site.

The next dive lead by Lloyd was at Martins Haven a mere five-minute drive from where we were staying at West Hook Campsite, this site is part of the Skomer Marine Nature Reserve. Here we saw lobster, mating Spider Crabs, a Pink Sea Fan and Moon Jellyfish.

The Final Dive which was also led by Lloyd as he was determined to find us huge amounts of catsharks was at Stackpole Quay on the South Pembrokeshire Coast, This site was a shallow dive at no more 7.5 metres but the dive was full of life with once again loads of mating Spider Crabs, lobster, Pollock, Sand Eel and huge amounts of catsharks.

As the expedition was ending, we found out there were some spaces on the Saturday and Sunday on Celtic Deeps Puffin and Seal snorkel Trips and some of us booked on to go out with them. Let’s just say that day was incredible, but you’ll have to wait for the images in the full trip report.