Trefor Pier Saturday 2nd - fantastic

[daveyclayton]

Late Saturday morning found me arriving at Billy the Kangaroo's house fashionably late, after an unplanned gourmet breakfast and a 10 min detour back to my house for the weight belt.

The two of us had grand plans to get our first UK sea dive of the year, somewhere North Wales. With high-tide around 4:00pm, a late start made a welcome change and we headed out towards the A5 and wherever it would take us. Bill in his usual organised form had printed off some weather info and potential dive sites cribbed from a number of sources. With winds forecast 1-4 later in the afternoon, and with Easter weekend's disastrous conditions in Anglesey, we had very low expectations. I said if we were diving in nil vis I'd prefer to either dive somewhere I'd dived before (ie T-bay) or somewhere I couldn't get lost and or run over by a jetski, so we decided on Trefor, which I'd never dived before but understood to be a no-brainer in the navigation stakes.

Arriving at Trefor around 2:30, we found a few local divers getting kitted up. We got chatting to Dereck, an expat BSAC instructor, who seemed chuffed with the conditions, and took us up to the pier to show us; the bottom was visible in 3-4 metres, and the sea was flat calm (not a wavelet in sight). There wasn't even a breeze as we took the surface swim to the end of the wall, following the scurrying harbour crabs, and dropped down under the pier. Swimming out along the length of the pier there were dozens of little brown squat lobsters, and serveral large blue lobbies hiding in the bigger crevices. Butterfish were in abundance under here (I'd only seen one before) as were edible and velvet crabs. Prawns hung upside down in the shelter of metal debris and occasionally ventured out into the open (always obscured from my camera by seaweed!) and the soft seabed was covered in Dahlia anemones. On reaching the end of the pier we were reminded of the presence of fisherman by lures and large hooks raining down around us (I think they were having a go at us - no idea what they thought they were fishing for). On the way round we found two dogfish "snoozing", after photographing them they tried to swim off and it transpired they were both hooked on the same like, so we freed them (one more successfully than the other) and off they went.
With bucketloads of air left and 40 odd minutes on the clock we took another pass of the pier, examining crannies previously unexplored and trying to keep the cold at bay. Swimming back up the pier revealed blennies and scorpionfish camouflaged expertly against the decaying timber and rocks, different kinds of flatfish - even a European Eel.
Surfaced at the steps after 66 minutes of gentle, relaxing dive in decent conditions with life in abundance and IT WAS SUNNY! - what more can you ask?

www.davidclayton.com/photogallery/trefor/01.jpg
www.davidclayton.com/photogallery/trefor/02.jpg
www.davidclayton.com/photogallery/trefor/03.jpg
www.davidclayton.com/photogallery/trefor/04.jpg
www.davidclayton.com/photogallery/trefor/05.jpg
www.davidclayton.com/photogallery/trefor/06.jpg
www.davidclayton.com/photogallery/trefor/07.jpg

(pics are nowt special, just to give you an idea)

[Clare Gledhill]

I don't want to be sitting in my office - I want to be diving


Great trip - wish I'd been there... have some green

[Billy the Kangaroo]

What a difference a week makes, could have been anwhere in the world, empty beach, sun shining, clear calm waters, no hassle parking beside steps into water.
Great dive
many thanks Dave.
wanna go back soon....

[JohnK]

Gutted...........................absolutely gutted......................every time I go there its nil vis. Well in, chaps.

[sean0801]

great report and pics

It's on my to do list

You are duly greened

[Mandlebrot]

Great for you but dam it was so shite for me last week