As with a lot of dives this year in the UK, the best laid plans can also be stopped with the great British weather. Once again, after months of planning a shore dive the week leading up to the dive had strong winds and rain. It wasn't looking likely that we could get in the water, so we cancelled the customer coming along for a pleasure dive with much disappointment (but diver safety goes first). Our team didn't want to ruin the whole day of planning, and as we had our dive gear already we decided to head down to Wales to find a beach we could clean and maybe try dive inland.

We got to Ravenspoint, an old favourite of Scuba Leeds and realised pretty quickly we had made the right decision cancelling our divers - the southern winds caused the dive site to be undivable (as predicted). We saw a seal resting at the entry point to the dive site and felt grateful that even though we couldn't get in the water, at least someone was enjoying the waters. 

We decided to try find another spot to assess the situation, and travelled to 3 different bays - all with the same story. Rough waters and no vis. 

So we headed to the north of the island as there was a beach there we thought we could clean up by the habour. We arrived and instantly the clouds passed over and the sun came out. Excellent, a beach clean up in the sun. However, when we got to the bay we were delighted to find flat calm seas due to the wind barrier across the bay. We were almost giddy now at finding a dive spot. A quick call to the habour master to get permission to get in to the water (with the promise of towing an SMB) and 10 mins later we were kitted up and ready to dive. Our expectations were low, but as we got in the water we realised we had at least a metres visibility and with torches we could easily dive the conditions here. 

Our dive was brilliant, I'm not sure if it was the 3 hour journey thinking we couldn't dive or just the lack of sea dives we have done this year but our staff loved it. We spotted 5 dogfish, 1 baby dogfish, scallops, a huge lobster, velvet crabs, edible crabs, shrimps and what we think was a seaslug (we are still googling it). Every fin keep forward into low vis, we weren't sure what we would find, it was exciting. The torches really helped in finding all the life, looking into every nook and cranny to spot something new. 

However, as expected in a habour we also found plastic bags, take away packets, food packets and small plastic fragments littering the dive site. All items spotted were removed safely into a mesh dive. With one diver towing an SMB and the other holding the mesh bag it takes a bit of team work to remove larger items but worth it. We did find a large old glass bottle down in the water but decided against removing it (a lot of sea life was growing on the bottle and inside, and we decided it would cause more harm than good if we removed it).

We dived down to 10m for 40mins, and loved it. Shallow waters were still warm, and when we got out at the end of the bag our full mesh bag filled us with a real sense of achievement. A quick photo of the trash and everything was disposed of correctly.

On the drive home we checked out the tides for 2 weeks later and plan to head back to Newry Beach for another pleasure dive and to collect more trash. 

After seeing so much life in the waters and knowing how many seals are around it just makes every bit of trash we remove worth it. 

Keep diving, keep removing trash, keep reporting it and showing others the situation below the sea and we really feel that it can only lead to an improved health of the ocean. 

A brilliant dive that left us with a warm feeling after, we can't wait to go back.