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This month, explore the underwater world of Wales in Best of the West
We’re delighted to be sharing with you this month an exciting new video series that takes you beneath the waves off the Welsh coast.
Here’s an introduction from Jake Davies:
Wales Best of the West (Cymru Gorau’r Gorllewin) is a bilingual online series that takes viewers on a journey from North to South Wales to discover four favourite shore dives.
The series provides viewers with the sense of being underwater to explore the diverse range of marine life and habitats found along the Welsh coast. As part of the online series we ensured that most of the content was captured below the waves with the majority being presented underwater amongst the habitats and with the marine life.
Sites were chosen by their natural importance, personal significance and importantly accessibility to provide the viewers with the details to explore the site themselves. To expand on the adventure, sites were also dived at night to reveal the changes in the communities and bringing in some exciting techniques to provide a new prospective on sites such as seagrass.
Through filming the series we captured footage of a diverse range of marine life that’s found off the coast with many species that aren’t seen often such as the Anglerfish. The time to organise, film, dive and develop the series in the edit room was driven by the passion of the team to showcase the habitats and marine life found below the Welsh coast. Showing it’s not always cold, dark and gloomy but quite the opposite. We believe that we are fortunate to head below the waves but many aren’t. Therefore, by revealing this through the Wales Best of the West series and bringing in details of species, habitats and issues that does face the marine environment is important. With the overall aim of onnecting people with their local coastline.
The sites we explore as part of the series are:
- Episode 1 – Porth Ysgaden
- Episode 2 – Porthdinllaen
- Episode 3 – Martins Haven
- Episode 4 – Stackpole
Wales Best of the West is a series from Dan Dŵr Cymru – a Welsh based independent natural history production company, specialising in underwater natural history, maritime history and storytelling with extensive local knowledge of filming marine life and scuba diving off the Welsh coast. Scubaverse contributor Jake Davies is one of the team that also includes Lloyd Jones and Ollie Putnam.
Huge thanks to Dan Dŵr Cymru for letting us share this trailer and the complete series. We will be sharing one episode each week during the month of February 2022.
You can find out more about Dan Dŵr Cymru (Under Water Wales) at https://dandwrcymru.wordpress.com.
Duttons Divers, who have recently announced a new hard boat to join their growing fleet over on the Llyn Peninsula based at Hafan Marina Dive Centre and a second dive centre that opened in January this year, have another big announcement to end the year on!
It seems that there’s just no stopping the Duttons Divers team as they announce their third dive centre opening – this time on Anglesey!
The dive centre will be open from January 2023, and is based just off the A55 at Llangefni Services, offering ease of access from all over the island and to those visiting for the day who will be passing by on their way to dive.
The centre will offer a fully stocked shop with all major brands, as well as a classroom and meeting place for teaching and briefings for the day’s guided dives around the island, equipment servicing and air fills – perfectly located to get your fills on your way too or from sites all over the island.
Owner Clare Dutton says: “We are extremely excited to announce the new centre. We have looked at Anglesey for a while, but the perfect place just did not come up until now. We wanted somewhere central that has easy access for divers to visit.”
If you would like to find out more about the new site, go to their website www.duttonsdivers.com
Duttons Divers, the North Wales based Scuba diving company, have been going from strength to strength with the expansion of a new dive centre last year, and now the addition of a second dive boat.
Duttons already offer guided shore and boat dives around the North Wales area, with their current dive boat, Little Viv, taking divers around the Llyn Peninsula. The area offers an array of marine life and variety of dive sites, including wrecks, caverns, scenic wall dives and of course their colony of curious seals at the Tudwals Islands.
The new hard boat has a diver capacity of 10, which can be booked as a single diver or as a group charter booking. The boat has toilet facilities, a kitchen for refreshments between dives and dedicated storage areas for kit.
Clare Dutton says: “We are extremely excited for the addition of the new boat. Little Viv is a great asset to our activities, but now being able to offer dive space only trips too for divers to explore the stunning area around here will make it even better.
The dive sites within this location offer something for all level of diver interest, from shallow interactions with the seals to deeper wrecks with tonnes of history. We are all very excited for the 2023 season!”
Duttons are now taking bookings for the 2023 season. Follow the link for more information: www.duttonsdivers.com/dive-boat
New year, new dive centre: Duttons to open on Anglesey in January 2023
New North Wales dive boat for 2023 season
Palaemon Divers to open new dive centre in Warrington
