A DIVER who has filmed the seabed around Pembrokeshire for a new BBC wildlife series has described one of the magical sights the coast around the county has to offer.

Lloyd Jones is a commercial diver who has worked in Pembrokeshire since 2006 alongside his dad Ceri, who lives in Haverfordwest.

Western Telegraph:

For BBC Wales’ latest documentary on the nation’s wildlife Wales: Land of the Wild, Lloyd used his local knowledge to help the production team film an annual event which can be hard to miss from the shoreline: the mass migration of spider crabs.

“Between June and August 1,500 crabs come into the shallows to shed their shells and to mate,” said Lloyd, 33, from Llanharan.

Locations which are “perfect” for the spider crab migration in Pembrokeshire include St Brides Haven and Stackpole according to Lloyd.

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During this time the spider crabs will jostle on top of one another just under the shallow waters off shore, as is depicted in the new BBC series.

“At St Brides, you could walk out into the water and see them stacking up to your waist, they are right on the shoreline,” he said.

“A good indication of if the migration is there is because on the turn of the tide you will see legs and parts of the shells,” he added.

Lloyd added St Brides Haven is a "hard dive site to beat" for him because of a deep personal connection.

"It holds such a special place for me diving there: It was the site of my first inshore dive, it was the first place I saw the spider crabs and also the place I proposed to my fiancee last year!"

The diver and his dad, 53, run the Haven Diving Service together from Milford Haven, offering tours of the watery depths around the county.

Lloyd also offers his expertise as a diver to the volunteer group Neptune’s Army of Rubbish Cleaners, which combs the seas to remove manmade waste.

Western Telegraph:

Since he started volunteering with NARC in 2007, Lloyd said he has noticed the types of waste in the seas off Wales change, with plastic bottles now prevalent among the rubbish he collects.

“We even found a Mitsubishi Colt,” he said about a well-known fly tipping spot near Pembroke Dock.

“Handbrake off and pushed off the slipway. Six months and it slowly started to become an artificial reef.

“It still had a licence plate on it and we were lucky enough to have filmed it so the original owner was found and fined,” added Lloyd.

The diver became involved with Wales: Land of the Wild due to his expertise of filming underwater alongside diving.

His knowledge of the waters around Pembrokeshire also led him to be involved in filming a pod of bottlenose dolphins in the Celtic deep, a trench between Ireland and Wales which is a popular spot for marine life.

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Other animals which can be spotted there include thresher sharks and porbeagle sharks.

“The series has been fantastic for wildlife in Pembrokeshire and all of Wales as well. It has given everyone a bit of an insight into what is available on our doorstep,” said Lloyd.

You can watch the last episode of Wales: Land of the Wild tomorrow night (April 25) at 8pm on BBC One Wales and the rest of the series is available on BBC iPlayer