It overwhelms your senses in the most welcome way. Land-based stresses are forgotten, and phones fall silent. There’s nothing else to do but scan the sea for a splash. The anticipation is totally absorbing and exhilarating. Every time, I feel like a child exploring and turning over stones. I think we all need a bit more of that feeling in our lives.

Pembrokeshire reaches out like an arm into the Celtic Sea. It’s the perfect access point for us to view large megafauna that follow the Gulf Stream to UK waters and then pass up through the deep waters of the St Georges Channel between Ireland and the UK. It’s rugged cliffs and offshore islands are some of the most important refuges for a number of our most iconic seabirds and seal colonies.

When, after many years spent travelling and diving around the world, I moved to Pembrokeshire, I was blown away by the amazing variety of wildlife on its doorstep. While cruising and diving it’s bottle green waters, I’ve spotted pilot whales, fin whales, minke whales, blue sharks, basking sharks, sunfish, bluefin tuna, seals and even the odd leatherback turtle. Our most common whale sightings are the minke whale. One of the smallest baleen whales, yet when in amongst the pods of dolphins they look huge! They’re known for their inquisitive nature. On one trip one individual stayed with us for half an hour, circling the boat. They’re most impressive when feeding. Flying into bait balls of shoaling fish, brought to the surface by tuna and dolphins.

Although not as deep as it’s evocative name would have you believe, at 100m depth the waters of the Celtic Deep offer the vertical range that suits some species of large sharks. Blue sharks are the most numerous – in fact they’re the most numerous and wide-ranging species of shark in the world. They’re also some of the most heavily fished. The individuals we see are generally mature females who migrate North to our waters from breeding grounds in the central/Eastern Atlantic. We commonly encounter groups of three and sometimes up to eight sharks at a time – blues are very curious sharks who will stick around and circle around to nuzzle and bump us to see what we are. As the water cools, they return South East to mate with males, most of which migrate East or South, some as far South as Brazil.