Above 18m - South Stack lighthouse, Anglesey

South Stack Lighthouse, and the sheer cliffs to its near-neighbour North Stack, provide some of the most-stunning scenery on the whole of Anglesey, and seeing the area from the water really shows it off in all its glory. It is possible to dive right along this length of Holyhead’s coastline, which features many little rocky pinnacles and reefs towards the harbour breakwater, but the best dive starts right under the tiny footbridge linking South Stack to Holyhead Mountain and involves a shallow drift back towards North Stack. With decent visibility and various species of marine life, divers of all levels will find plenty to keep them occupied.

Arrival at the site
I dived the South Stack Lighthouse drift with Aubrey Diggle of SBS RIB Charters, a long-established company that will be familiar with many regular Anglesey divers. Digs, as he is known, is a former RNLI senior helmsman and he certainly knows these waters well, being born and bred on Anglesey. Martin Sampson, of Anglesey Divers, has long worked closely with Digs, and we met at his dive centre to collect cylinders/air fills/etc before driving down to the marina at Holyhead Harbour, where the SBS RIB Liparis was being put into the water. There is free parking for several cars in the top car park.

Pre-dive briefing
There was a strong wind blowing, but the area between South Stack and North Stack was sheltered by the mountain, so it was one of the few diveable spots on the island. That is the beauty of Anglesey – being a small island, you can always find somewhere sheltered to get a dive. We all kitted up in the car park, putting our set-up cylinders, BCDs and regs into the Liparis, along with fins, masks, etc, and then scrambling aboard once Digs had launched the RIB off the slipway.

It was a rough ride out through the harbour, which had a lot of wind-driven swell, but once we were outside the breakwater and in the shelter of Holyhead Mountain, it wasn’t too bad, although it was well-worth keeping a tight hold on one of the grab handles for the odd freak wave! Arriving at South Stack, Digs expertly guided the RIB into the ‘cave’ nestling beneath the footbridge (an old set of steps carved into the rock face show where supply vessels used to dock to unload during the building of the South Stack Lighthouse). The water was flat calm in here, and Digs and Martin were able to give us a rundown on where we were dropping in, what direction the current would be taking us and how we’d need to launch DSMBs for pick-up.

What to look for
You will find hundreds of seastars littering the seabed, as well as lobster, edible crabs, velvet swimming crabs, blennies, gobies, prawns and shoals of pollock. Look closely at the seaweed-smothered rocks and you will spot various species of nudibranch. You might even be lucky and be visited by a seal – we saw one on the surface, but he didn’t come and say hello during the dive.

The dive
We backward rolled off the RIB and descended to the shale seabed in 5-6m. As we were still in the ‘cave’ entrance, there was no current, so we set off in the vague direction of North Stack, wending our way through huge outcrops of kelp and weed. As we entered deeper water, the bottom composition changed and we now had sections of rocky reef, covered in seaweed, kelp, algae and the occasional sponge or clump of dead man’s fingers. We hit a sandy seabed at 11m, and started following the reef where it disappeared into the sand. Smaller pollock darted around above our heads, with the odd larger specimen appearing out of the gloom for a closer look at the bubble-blowing invaders. Crevices harboured at least one or two edible crabs and legions of prawns, while the larger holes were home to decent-sized lobster. Starfish were everywhere you looked, ranging in size from tiny cushion stars to huge common starfish some 40-50cm across. It was when I was taking a closer look at some of these dinky cushion stars that I found my first nudibranch, and once I’d ‘got my eye in’, I saw at least 15 examples.

With the maximum depth to the sand being 11-12m, my buddy and I had plenty of air to relax and enjoy the dive. You could get a bit more depth if you swam out across the featureless sand, but there isn’t a lot to see and this could also get you nearer the strong currents heading out into the Irish Sea – not where you want to be surfacing!

Eventually, an hour was upon us, and we fired up a DSMB so Digs knew where we were. Hitting the surface, the RIB was a few hundred metres away, but as soon as he saw our heads, Digs was on his way and a couple of minutes later we were back on board and off to pick up other divers. A fast, bouncy ride back into the harbour and it was time for a coffee and some biscuits before we unloaded the RIB in the car park.

PADI courses
The PADI Drift Diver Specialty is an ideal course for this dive site, teaching you how to cope with a current, and you would also find plenty of subjects for the Underwater Digital Photographer Specialty.

The dive centre
Anglesey Divers is a PADI five-star centre owned and run by Martin and Caroline Sampson. Situated in Holyhead at the end of the A55 dual carriageway, it is easily accessible, and this positioning enables them to reach all the main dive sites quickly and simply. They offer training from Open Water right up to Divemaster, and can also provide technical training with Technical Divers International (TDI). The shop is compact but well stocked, and they can offer air and nitrox fills to 300bar from their shiny new Bauer compressor.

Dive charter
SBS RIB Charters offers diving and scenic trips aboard its eight-metre RIB Liparis, which can hold 12 passengers and two crew, as well as RYA Powerboat courses from Level One right up to Advanced. Digs has also catered to various TV production companies who wanted a stable platform for filming purposes.

Sport Diver Verdict
A shallow, easy drift dive in a stunning location, teeming with marine life.