Episode 2 Iolo's Welsh Sea

To the north, west and south Wales is surrounded by sea.

I'm on a sea journey around Wales.

RESPIRATOR NOISE

In this episode, I'm travelling around the Llyn Peninsula

to Cardigan Bay.

I'll be meeting people who work on the sea.

-The best thing for you to catch is lobster, is it?

-All of it, Iolo.

I don't think now we could do without any of it, you've got to get it all.

Those who have a passion for the sea.

I spent hours looking out to sea as a child longing,

wanting to be involved, wanting to go on the water.

And I'm discovering the incredible wildlife that lives in the sea.

Amazing thing!

The sea is one of Wales' finest assets.

Above all, it's a place where we can relax and play.

This is the Llyn Peninsula and the beautiful harbour of Trefor.

I'm setting off in a kayak with instructor Huw Jones.

We're heading for Nefyn

on one of the best sea kayaking journeys in Wales.

On a beautiful, calm day like this, you can understand why people

get hooked on this increasingly popular water sport.

It gives you the freedom to quietly explore isolated coastal areas

and see views that you can't see from shore.

This is the way to see the coast, isn't it?

Nice and peaceful.

And do you know, when you're in a kayak,

the birds are far more tolerant of you too, aren't they?

-Yeah.

-They don't feel as threatened somehow.

Oh, look at that, inch perfect. Well done, boy, nice one.

-Oh, that's nice, isn't it? Nice little feature?

-Yeah.

So do you just lead tours or lead expeditions usually then, Huw?

Our main sort of work is training, that's on a day-to-day basis,

and then three or four times a year,

we'll do an expedition somewhere else.

-Next week, we're off to Connemara for eight days.

-Oh, wow!

-And this coastline here, this must be ideal for you?

-Oh, yeah, it's a good training ground.

-Especially in this weather for somebody like me.

-Yeah.

Sea kayaks can cruise at a fairly high speed

especially on calm seas like today.

An experienced, fit kayaker can paddle 20 miles or more in a day.

That allows you to go on long journeys

and explore big chunks of the coastline

and get quietly close to wildlife.

-Is that a seal?

-Ah...yes.

-Oh, there's a couple here, there's a couple.

-Yeah.

A couple of seals, look, just popped up to have a look.

Hello, boys.

Down he goes.

There's one here. Look at this.

-They're lovely animals, aren't they?

-Yeah.

-I like seals.

-There's quite a few in the back of that cave.

-Oh, is there? Oh, cool.

-That's what all the splashing was.

-That's obviously where they go in to hide.

-Yeah.

Here she comes, look. Completely relaxed, isn't she?

Off she goes.

And that's the joy with these, Huw, is that they don't make any noise.

No noise at all, do they?

Nice to see the seals.

-Well, we've got guillemots, a couple of guillemots here now.

-Yeah.

-They've quarried every headland here, haven't they?

-Yeah.

-Every single one.

Do you know what, I didn't actually realise that until now, until kayaking along here.

You don't see it from land really.

Some of these old quarries are tucked out of the way.

The north Llyn coast was extensively quarried for granite,

but all but one quarry has now closed.

Ships carrying quarried granite and slate from other North Wales mines

would travel pretty much on the same route that I'm taking with Huw.

And when they passed the Nefyn and Porthdinllaen headland,

they would have to avoid hidden rocks underwater.

Many did not.

RESPIRATOR NOISE

Underwater, there are several shipwrecks that failed to keep their distance from the coast

because of fog or stormy weather.

RESPIRATOR NOISE

This is all Welsh slate.

The ship itself has all but gone, just a few bits and bobs remaining, but the slate is still here.

And no-one really knows where this ship was from

or where it was going to,

they don't know the name of the ship.

But they have found a few Irish coins here,

so the thinking is that it was on its way

probably out of Caernarfon maybe or maybe Bangor,

taking Welsh slate over to Ireland.

The slate cargo has been transformed

into an artificial reef full of sea life.

The slates were en route to make a few Welsh landlords wealthy,

but they failed to complete their journey

and instead helped to improve the wealth of the sea.

Usually, it's the ship that forms an artificial reef.

There's all...the seaweed and the plants and the fish living on it.

But in this case, the ship has long gone, it's 150 years old now,

and it's the cargo, the slate that has formed this artificial reef,

which is absolutely alive with wildlife.

You've got lobsters, you've got starfish, sponges and all kinds of fish.

Many of the fish are wrasses.

There are two species here. The ones with a black dot are goldsinny wrasse,

those with black and white stripes are female cuckoo wrasse.

There are also big shoals of pouting.

The artificial slate reef is a magnet for feeding fish.

Crates of slates are lying just as they were stacked

over 150 years ago.

They're great hiding places for crabs, lobsters

and all kinds of sea life.

Closer to the shore at Porthdinllaen,

there's another rich underwater habitat.

This time a natural one.

It's a rare bed of sea grass.

Alison Hargrave, who's the Special Areas of Conservation Officer with Gwynedd council,

looks after this unique marine plant.

It's the only flowering plant you get in the sea,

so it's very different from... You'll get lots of seaweeds, bootlace weeds, kelp, that kind of thing.

This is very different, it's got leaves, it's got a root system as well, which other things don't have.

This one is a particularly big bed,

-it's about the size of 46 football pitches. It's a really massive bed.

-Is it?!

Why is it here then? What does it actually need?

Exactly the same as what these boats here need, it needs shelter,

it needs shallow seas, it needs a lot of light.

And it needs quite clean water, so it's a good indication

that we've got clean waters here as well if you get sea grass.

How rare is it in Wales?

Cos I don't know of anywhere else in Wales where I could dive and see sea grass like I can see here.

At this point, I think it's now been classed as quite nationally scarce.

So you get a few bits, we've got some in Criccieth down the coast,

you've got some in Milford Haven down the coast.

This is one of the biggest beds. But over the last 20-30 years, we've lost about 80% of our sea grass,

mostly down to a wasting disease, but then we've got lots of other things,

the moorings are having an impact, pollution.

There's lots of issues there that are contributing to that.

Like land plants, many underwater plants die back over the winter.

It's now the autumn and the sea grass is past its best,

-but it's sill an impressive sight.

-RESPIRATOR NOISE

When you come down here, it really is like swimming through an underwater meadow.

It's an amazing habitat.

And it's full of small fish,

lots and lots of different fish using this sea grass as cover.

This small fish is a two-spotted goby.

It likes swimming over underwater plants close to shore.

It's one of 33 species of fish

that have been found living on the sea grass.

And some are very well hidden.

Look at this!

It's a cat shark or a dogfish

resting on the sea grass, a bit like a hammock,

and it's being rocked back and forth, back and forth.

OK, boy, here we are. Hello.

There we are, you go back down and rest again.

-RESPIRATOR NOISE

-Amazing things.

There are also less obvious animals living on the sea grass.

These tentacles belong to a snakelocks anemone.

It catches tiny particles of food suspended in the sea.

It usually likes attaching itself to rocks,

but sea grass works just as well as an anchor point.

This rare habitat is important for many species,

but it's a very delicate one.

One of the big problems you have here is...

when boats moor down here,

the mooring chain'll go round and round and round with the currents and the tides

and it clears an area of sea grass.

And then sargassum, or Japweed as it's known,

an alien species, this is him here,

this comes in and takes over a lot of those bare areas.

And in just the last 25 years,

they've lost about 10% of the sea grass beds here because of that.

Bare patches caused by boat moorings are found in many

parts of the grass.

It's only when you come down here that you actually see the damage.

Of course, boats need to be able to moor up.

I've actually come here today by boat.

But it is something that we all need to be aware of,

after all it is a Special Area of Conservation, albeit a hidden one.

Sailing, both competitively

and as a leisure activity, is one of the oldest sports of the sea, and

there are few better places to sail than in Cardigan Bay near Pwllheli.

It's one of three locations in the UK which is recognised as a

major international venue, hosting European and world championships.

I'm heading out on a fast offshore racing yacht.

I'm with Richard Tudor, who used to compete internationally

and has sailed around the world twice.

This high-performance boat, with a value of around £100,000,

has won many races but today it'll be just plain sailing.

At least, I hope so. I'm not the most experienced crew hand

he could've chosen.

But I'm in safe hands and lucky for me

the conditions are not exactly challenging.

-There you go.

-Done?

-Fantastic.

-Yeah?

Come back now.

I feel I've been very lucky.

A privilege, really, to have been brought up in such

a wonderful place in Cardigan Bay.

I've spent hours looking out to sea, as a child, wanting...that longing

feeling, wanting to be involved, wanting to be on the water.

-OK, Tomos comes back now.

-In this case...tension on the halyard.

I got you, yeah.

Llyn Peninsula certainly did have their breed of incredible sailors

that travelled or tramped the whole world, making a living.

What would be the usual crew on a boat like this then, Richard?

This boat only goes out racing with the aim of winning.

You'd have your bowman, mastman, pitman, two trimmers,

mid-sail man, the helmsman and the tactician.

-Eight people?

-Eight people.

-Wow!

One or two guests

or if it's a very windy day

you'd need some more people for the weight.

Wow!

And you'd concentrate and move the weight across the boat

-at certain times.

-Yeah, yeah.

The more weight you have on the weather side,

the more upright the boat becomes.

And the more upright the boat, the faster the boat, is it?

In certain wind conditions and sea states, yes.

Also you can feel, did you feel the instant acceleration

when Tomos pulled the sail in, the instant acceleration we had...?

We picked up straightaway.

Picked up speed straightaway.

So, what makes this area, this bay particularly,

so good for sailing then?

Well, it's clean.

It's got incredibly clean waters.

It's got relatively little tidal influence.

The tide goes up and down

but there's not a fast stream as you have in other

places, seaside resorts.

And, as well, the lack of commercial traffic.

Ships and ferries don't enter the bay and it's incredibly safe.

And here we are now, we've gone past Llanbedrog,

coming towards Abersoch, and you see sailing ships everywhere here.

Yeah, dozens and dozens of them!

OK, ready about. Lee ho!

On a day like this, you'd have to agree with

Richard that this must be one of the best places in the world to sail.

It's made even more special by regular

visits by bottlenose dolphins.

In fact, the clean and relatively warm water in this

part of Cardigan Bay attracts a lot of very special wildlife.

These are the islands of

St Tudwal to the south of Abersoch.

In the sea near the islands

an unusual shrimp lives on the sea bed.

I'm going to dive to look for it with marine biologist Rohan Holt.

On all dives, you must have a backup crew of safety divers

just in case something goes wrong below the surface.

The sea bed here is 20 metres down and the visibility isn't

particularly good, so dive safety is very important.

We're trying to find a mantis shrimp, a crustacean that has

claws that resemble the front legs of the insect the praying mantis.

It's generally a Mediterranean species.

It may have spread north as a result of recent climate change

and the possible warming up of the sea.

There again, the shrimps may have always been here

and we've simply not found them before.

In the UK, they're only seen here in Cardigan Bay

and some parts on the south coast of England.

Ah, I think this might be one.

Yes, looks like it, here's the other end now.

Oh, right, OK, I've got you.

It's a U-shaped burrow underneath here...

..goes down about seven or eight inches, and if there's a

mantis shrimp in the burrow,

it might just pop out the other side any second.

Oh, fantastic!

Oh! Look at that, wow!

Ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow!

IOLO LAUGHS

They've got this amazing array of very sharp spines...

Oh, yeah, I see.

..on the back end of these things.

And they can inflict pain even through, ow, my gloves.

Honestly?

So, when you pick them up, he'll kick into you with that

and those will penetrate gloves and penetrate the skin?

Oh, yes, definitely.

This is, actually, quite a small one.

Do we know how many there are here?

Well, when we did a survey of them a few years ago, we were finding

that there's around about, up to about

two or three burrows per square metre

in the densest part of the area.

So, you know there are thousands of them.

So, why this part of Wales and nowhere else?

Why not in southern Cardigan Bay?

Well, I think in Cardigan Bay during the summer,

water temperatures get up to 19 degrees at times, and these little

guys being from the Mediterranean

they really like their, sort of,

thermal, warm bath that Cardigan Bay becomes during the summer.

There he is, look at that!

That is the mantis shrimp,

a Mediterranean species,

now basking off the coast of Pwllheli.

Why it's here, don't ask me, nobody really knows but there he is,

the mantis shrimp.

And although the front end looks dangerous

with these praying mantis-like claws,

it's the tail end, that end there, that's the one

you've got to be careful of. That's the end that does all the damage.

Amazing thing!

Right, off you go, boy.

Oh, here he is, look, he's come back to see me.

Hello, boy, you're supposed to go down now not up.

Get down, come on, get down!

He'll probably go and burrow,

find a new burrow or make a new burrow himself.

The sea holds many secrets.

It's a big, wild environment, and similar to land,

life goes on day and night.

We're just off the coast of Criccieth on the Llyn Peninsula

here now, you can see the castle behind me there

and we're waiting for the sun to go down because we're going

to do a night dive, something that I haven't done for many, many years.

And the reason for doing this is because it's very different,

everything looks different at night.

The colours are different and you get different creatures

coming out as well and you're never quite sure

what you're going to get down there.

Animals that rest by day usually become

active as soon as they can when the light decreases

and the possibility of them being seen by predators reduces.

Like watching wildlife on land, between dusk

and total darkness is often the best time.

We dive soon after sunset.

Our lights are visible in the sea.

The sea bed near Criccieth is sand.

A swimming crab is out looking for food.

This curious creature covered with what looks like hair

is a sea mouse.

It's actually a distant relative of the earthworm and it, too,

is scavenging for remains of dead animals on the sea bed.

This broad-nosed pipefish is using its tiny

fins to keep its front end steady as it swims.

Its movement isn't particularly agile

because it has an armoured, rigid body.

Usually by day these things are hiding away in amongst

sea grass or seaweed,

virtually invisible, and here

they are at night out in the open like, well, like small eels, really.

And lots of these will be coming out at night now

in order to avoid the bigger fish.

Hermit crab here, common enough but by day usually

hidden in their shell and at night they come out and forage, and of

course when it grows, it'll move out of one shell into a bigger shell.

This one's almost outgrown this shell already.

It'll be feeding on all kinds of organic material from the sea bed.

Anything dead, a dead fish or another dead crab, it will come

and scavenge on that as well.

That's a big one, I'll show you, I'll put my hand in by him

just to show you, give you some idea of the size...oh, off he goes.

While Criccieth sleeps, the sea offshore is busy.

The sea around Wales is a fascinating place,

even after dark.

Because the sea is such a big area, literally on our doorstep, we might

be forgiven for thinking that it's a limitless and convenient resource.

But that's not the case.

If we don't fish wisely, then stocks will diminish

and eventually disappear altogether.

15 commercial fishing boats operate from Aberystwyth.

Dean Parry skippers one of them.

How far out will you go then now?

The furthest we fish at the moment is about six mile.

But we will, a little bit later on,

we'll go up to about ten, maybe 11 mile.

So, is that 11 mile out or just 11 mile down...?

-11 mile out, 11 mile out to sea.

-Oh, 11 mile out, will you?

We go about eight mile south and about six mile north.

Right, OK.

So we cover quite a big area, we cover quite a big area.

All of your crabs, lobsters,

everything you catch goes off abroad?

No, about 90% of it does.

So, this is the first one coming up now, is it?

Coming up to the first fleet here now.

-OK, right, I'd better let you get on with it.

-Lovely.

Like most coastal fishermen in Wales,

Dean fishes for lobsters and crabs,

with what he calls a fleet of pots,

which are baited baskets linked together with rope

and dropped to any depth up to around 20 metres of water.

Hey, that's posh bait, isn't it?

What are you putting in there?

They like a bit of salmon.

Aye, this is upmarket fishing, this is, mun!

DEAN LAUGHS

You get a better class of lobster then!

You get a better class of...aye!

I do like using salmon, it's a waste product.

You're not catching fish to use as bait.

The fish is caught, all the best parts have been taken off it.

Oh, that's a nice one, look at that.

Sponge crab.

Do you know, I've never seen one of these before.

They've normally got a bit of sponge all around them.

They bring their homes with them.

Yeah, and it's like sort of camouflage,

they put bits on them and all this.

Well, well, well, sponge crab.

Creatures like sponge crabs that we don't eat or undersized crabs

and lobsters are put back in the sea.

These spider crabs will be kept.

Squid eggs, these are.

They lay them in strings like that and they like to lay them on pots.

Amazing things, look at them.

So, the best thing for you to catch is probably lobster, is it?

Rather than crab, or it doesn't matter? Either or...

-These are all right.

-Oh, they are?

Spiders, the female spiders, because it's a very...they're heavy

and there's a lot of, erm....

Actually all of it, Iolo.

I don't think now

-you could do without any of it. You've got to get it all.

-Yeah.

You must have good days and bad days on this business as well, do you?

You have days where you think...

On average, 50 good days.

And is this, so far, a good day?

-Well, not really.

-No?

-No...well, mind you, it's early yet, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Fishing is carefully regulated to ensure

the protection of sea wildlife and Dean is helping with

a survey of marine species being carried out by Bangor University.

Marine ecologists Jodie Haig and Julia Pantin are tagging and

measuring undersized lobsters before they're put back into the sea.

The information will be used to study lobster behaviour

and their numbers.

We've got different colours for different areas around Wales,

and so what we'll do is we'll tag all the undersized and some

of the oversized and gravid females, like pregnant females as well.

So this is just lobster you're...

Just lobster for now, yeah.

And maybe next year we might branch out into tagging crab as well

but for the moment it's just lobster.

And we'll soon be able to get

an indication of the population size and how far they move as well, so...

The majority of Welsh fishing boats are inshore vessels.

So, Welsh fishermen are highly dependent on the state

of local stocks, but surprisingly,

we still don't know a great deal about the biology of this sea life.

We don't know how abundant the species are, how the

species are distributed in Cardigan Bay,

or, indeed, if the populations are fragile.

So, fishermen and scientists working together on projects like this

is vital for both the fishermen and their catch.

Next time...

I'll be watching dolphins herding fish into a beautiful bay.

We're at the mouth of the Teifi here.

So, you get the salmon and the sewin.

I'll be seeing the destructive effects of the sea.

It was land right out to those two pinnacles there?

There was land right out to those two pinnacles there.

I'll be finding out about tidal energy off the coast of Pembrokeshire.

This device will be put into Ramsey Sound,

and St David's will be powered by tidal power.

And I'll be going to the most westerly point of Wales to

swim with seals.

A female grey seal nibbling away at my fins, quite lovingly.