Western Ecology Tour: Notes from the Field – North Wales

Published 5 years agoon June 28, 2021

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 second leg of the trip:

This report is all about The North Wales leg of our Journey, it took us around 12 hours to get to North Wales from the Highlands of Scotland.

We spent two days with Jake Davies who runs Project Seagrass and Angel Shark Project: Wales. Day one was spent in Morfa Nefyn photographing the seagrass meadows at low tide, to say we took of loads of split shots is an understatement, we also found Snakelocks Anemones amongst the grass.

The second day consisted of two dives at Porth Ysgaden, we did a morning dive at 8am and then an evening dive at 8pm. Both of the dives were definitely a macro photographers dream, a dive filled with crabs, from velvet swimmers to Spider Crabs, nudibranchs and Stalked Jellyfish. There was also am abundance of Leopard Gobies and Fifteen Spines Sticklebacks amongst the kelp.

A truly brilliant two days of the Expedition, but watch this space for the final field report talking about our days in Pembrokeshire. And remember that there will be an Expedition Report after the trip.

If you’d like any further information and to keep up to date with Expedition Western Ecology Tour check out the webpage https://andythenortherndiver.com/expedition-wet/

Donovan Lewis

Donovan is a Divemaster who currently works as a Shark Diver at Blue Planet Aquarium based in Ellesmere Port. Donovan’s passion lies with Elasmobranch’s (Sharks & Rays) and this passion has led him to work in South Africa with White Sharks for a short period. He also believes that education through exposure is the best way to re-educate people about Sharks. Follow Donovan at www.instagram.com/donovans_reefs