Juvenile European squid, Portland
Menai Strait, North Wales- a driftdependent site that needs proper slackwater planning, so more of a next-step site than a beginner’ s one, but the tidal flow means it’ s dense with filter-feeding life. Best treated with local knowledge and kept shallow along the wall. Winter late night quarry dives Plenty of inland quarry dive centres offer set-day night dives in the winter. These are the backbone of UK night diving, and there’ s a reason our clubs run so many organised night dives at them through the winter. Sheltered, predictable, with known entry and exit points and often facilities to warm up afterward. The short winter days mean you can do a genuine night dive at a sociable hour rather than waiting until midnight in June. The sunk features- boats, aircraft, platforms- take on a completely different character under torchlight, and the resident fish and crayfish are accustomed to divers and often very approachable. For anyone wanting to build night-diving skill in a controlled setting,
inland sites are ideal, and the club social side of a winter night dive with a hot drink afterward is half the appeal.
My honest recommendation for anyone starting out: do your first few at a quarry or at Loch Long, get your light drills and navigation solid, and then take those skills to the open coast and the west of Scotland, where the real wild rewards are.
A good rule that runs through all of these:
keep your night dives shallow. There’ s no reason to go deep at night; the marine life is concentrated in the top few metres of the reef or wall anyway, gas planning and narcosis stay comfortably out of the picture. The cold is less punishing, and if a light fails you’ re never far from ambient light or the surface. Most of the best night diving in the UK happens above 12-15 metres, and you lose nothing by staying there.
Velvet swimming crab
Pipefish in the lights
Backlit dead( or alive) men’ s fingers
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