The sublime
SOUTH S
ometimes I forget how incredibly lucky I am living so close to the sea - a short 20-minute walk from my house and my toes touch the sand. Although I don’t often dive from my local beach, this makes me incredibly blasé about the wonderful diving that’s right on my doorstep with some stunning sites all along the coast. These are some of my favourites…
Swanage Pier
Located right on my doorstep, Swanage is probably the most-famous diveable pier in the UK. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve dived here. I suspect most British divers have visited the pier at least once, but for those that haven’t, Swanage Pier is located on the Isle of Purbeck on the south coast in Dorset. The pier is perfectly set up for those like me that enjoy an easy life. You can drive right on to the pier and park close to steps down to the water. As you can imagine, this makes the pier extremely popular, so arriving early is key. There is a filling station and a dive shop, so all your diving needs are catered for. Established in 1958, it boasts Britain’s oldest dive school, Divers Down. Pat and Pete the current custodians of the business have an absolute wealth of knowledge of the local diving and operate shuttle boat services to all of the top dive sites, including probably Britain’s most-dived wreck, the SS Kyarra. It’s always worth popping in for a chat while you wait for your cylinders to fill. They also sell a mean pie! But it’s the pier that I love and over the years it has become an old friend. A short walk from your car with the help of free-to-use trolleys for your kit brings you to a platform halfway down the pier. A quick giant-stride entry drops you
into the middle of the action and you only have two choices - turn left into the shallows or turn right and head to the end of the pier and slightly deeper water. Being a photographer, I can spend hours within just a few square metres so I will rarely explore the whole pier on a single dive. The relative safety of the pier is a magnet for all kinds of animals. As the water warms, giant spider crabs venture in to breed, while clouds of sand eels can get so big that they block out the sun with larger fish like bass and pollock in close pursuit. Wrasse can often be found busying themselves building nests and if you look carefully, nudibranchs can be found crawling their way around the sea floor. Then there is the critter that every diver loves - the tompot blenny. They are funny fish to watch and are in abundance here. Often popping out from their hole to see who is invading their territory, they will escort you off the premises but then get in a fight as they venture into another tompot’s territory. If you disturb the sea floor by mistake the area fills with these charming little fish looking to see if you have uncovered a tasty little morsel for their lunch. The pier still uncovers new delights and only a handful of years ago a new shrimp was discovered, Periclimenes sagittifer or better known as the snakelocks anemone shrimp. These blue and white exotic-looking shrimp are more used to the warmer waters of Europe but have now made the pier their home. It’s very hard to get bored here and that’s probably what makes Swanage pier so popular.
A quick giant-stride entry drops you into the middle of the action and you only have two choices - turn left into the shallows or turn right and head to the end of the pier
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