Swanage Pier
Swanage Pier is truly one of the best sites along the South Coast.
Due to its sheltered location, it is diveable at almost any tide and is often divable when other dive sites are blown out.
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Unsurprisingly, Swanage Pier is located in the pleasant Dorset seaside town of Swanage; it’s a lovely place to visit for the whole family, diving or not. The pier is close to the town centre and has a sheltered beach that’s popular with families and sun-seekers. Combined with other local attractions, such as its wonderful steam railway, it is an excellent destination for a weekend diving break for the whole family. It can provide plenty for any non-divers tagging along to do.
Swanage Pier is a shallow dive site with visibility of up to 10m and a depth of 7m. The site features barnacle-covered pier posts, sand patches, rocks, pebbles, and scattered junk. Under the pier, divers can find spider crabs, anemones, soft corals, and unexpected objects like a fisherman's deckchair. Both piers offer a variety of marine life including sea squirts, sponges, invertebrates, blennies, gobies, wrasse, crabs, lobsters, and more. Swanage Pier is a popular site for snorkelers and divers of all levels due to its ease of access, calm waters, and abundant marine biodiversity.
The pier boasts a very nice cafe, dive shop, toilets and 3 charter boats making it a destination for divers of all abilities.
On arrival if you go to the gates at the end of the pier you should find some dive trollies you can offload your kit into before parking in the Broad Street carpark.
Even when conditions don’t allow elsewhere, Swanage Pier is always in contention as a reliable place to dive (so far as that’s possible with any coastal sites).
An unhelpful weather condition to watch out for is an easterly wind, which can send waves into the bay and destroy visibility, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the weather forecast. Regarding tides, the range isn’t huge in this area, so it’s possible to dive at any time, though it is much easier when the tide is higher.
