Back Yard to Bucket List: Nigel Motyer
Welcome to one of Scubaverse.com’s regular ongoing series, Back Yard to Bucket List. Each month, we ask an underwater photographer to talk about their dives—local, favourite, and bucket list—and what makes them special. A personal insight into diving with a camera.
We have been all around the world recently with our Back Yard to Bucket List featured photographers. But today, we’re coming slightly closer to home, while still staying on foreign seas.
Nigel Motyer is from Ireland and has some stunning local imagery, including one of the most impressive images of basking sharks I have ever seen. Shannon recently reviewed his beautiful book, Beneath Irish Seas, which is really worth grabbing a copy of. Hopefully, you’ll get a taste of what the book is like below, as well as some of Nigel’s stunning imagery from other beautiful locations.
So, sit back and enjoy.
Saeed
Nigel Motyer
My name is Nigel Motyer. I live in Dublin, Ireland. I started diving in the 80s and found underwater photography shortly after that. Initially, I used a Nikonos camera and slide film, which was a really steep learning curve, but I loved it. I knew diving and underwater photography was something I’d keep with me throughout my life, and what a great choice that was!
I’ve been lucky that work kept me travelling a lot, and I was able to enjoy some amazing locations around the world, but my passion for diving at home never dimmed. It took me 40 years, but I’ve just had my first book of Irish underwater photography published. Beneath Irish Seas was published last October and is an underwater photographic journey around the island of Ireland.
I’ve been diving here a long time now, but it still grabs me more than any other destination. If, by some chance, I haven’t been diving for a few weeks, it’s an Irish dive site I’ll plan a visit to so I can get back into the water. Cold-water reefs are so rich, and there is always something new to see and photograph.
Backyard Dive
My local dive is not really a dive at all, but a snorkel. I live in Dublin, which is situated in a big sweeping bay. At the southern end of the bay there is an island, Dalkey Island, which has become home to a large colony of grey seals.
I love nothing more than going swimming with these seals. It’s a fantastic way to usher in the new diving season. Visibility can be a challenge, as Dublin Bay is fed by a number of large rivers, and so the water here can be murky, particularly if there has been any bad weather. But in May, the water is settling out after the winter storms and the viz starts to return. This coincides with the fresh kelp growth and the last season’s pups heading into their first summer, full of curiosity and energy.
I love nothing more than swimming with the seals here. It’s only 40 minutes from my home and a great way to keep water fit and keep familiar with the camera.
Usually, it takes a little while before the seals overcome their early shyness, but after an hour there are usually one or two who want to nibble your fins and play. They really are like playful aquatic dogs. On a late spring morning, there is no better way to spend time.
Favourite Dive
This really is an impossible question! Every time you ask me this, I will have a different answer. It’s usually based on what photographic challenge I’ve set myself. If I get images I love, I’ll have a new favourite dive!
Of course, I’ve been incredibly lucky to see some amazing sights around the world: orca feeding in Norway, crocodiles in Cuba, huge schools of hammerheads in the Galapagos Islands, and I’m just back from my first trip to Lembeh with its amazing array of macro critters.
In Ireland recently, we’ve been lucky to see a recovery of the basking shark populations, and I have had some amazing encounters with these huge fish over the last 10 years. But, as I said above, if you ask me for a favourite dive, it will always tend to be my most recent successful photographic dive, so it changes all the time.
So, there are so many fantastic memories, but a couple of days ago I went for a cheeky solo shore dive on a wonderful little reef at the south of Galway Bay on our west coast. It’s a highly tidal site and you only have a short slack window to get out to and back from the reef before the flow would sweep you away, but that huge flow means the reef, although shallow at less than 10 metres, is covered in colourful life.
Towards the end of the dive, just as I was starting to feel the tide pulling me, I found a male lumpsucker guarding a fresh clutch of eggs on the top lip of the reef, and amazingly, I happened to have the right lens on the camera.
These are quite large fish that, in winter, come into shallow water to mate and lay eggs in a nest that the male then stays to guard until they hatch a few weeks later. During this time, the male takes on a beautiful red colouration and never strays far from the nest.
I’ve only seen this a few times and hardly ever when I had the right camera set-up. I got so engrossed in taking pictures that by the time I had the shots I liked, the tide was hammering again. It was a lively swim back to shore, but what a great day out!
Bucket List Dive
I love a coral reef as much as the next guy, but lately I’ve really been enjoying colder-water destinations. I’ve done three trips to Port Hardy in northern Vancouver Island in the last few years and will be heading back there again in a few months, but I’ve always had a hankering to head to Tasmania and dive the kelp and sponge forests there.
New Zealand is firmly on my list too. I did book a dive trip to the Poor Knights Islands once, but a passing storm cancelled that trip, and so I’ve never dived New Zealand. But I know there is a lot of incredible diving in those southern waters.
I did a dive trip to southern Australia a year ago, which was amazing for the variety of incredibly colourful and interesting life just off the shore. A really epic bucket list dive trip could take in all three of those destinations. Now that would be brilliant.
Beneath Irish Seas
The Hidden Wonders of Ireland’s Amazing Marine Life
Nigel Motyer
PUB DATE: 23 OCT 2025
HARDBACK
224pp
€27.99/£24.99
ISBN: 9781785375705
Wow – wasn’t that great? I think I’m about to book a trip to Ireland and possibly Cuba.
Don’t forget, if you want to feature, then drop us a message.
Saeed
