Park at Glenarm Car Park and access the beach on foot. The seagrass bed is found ~50 metres off the shore from 5-9 metres depth.
Public toilets available in the town near the main car park on the Cloney road. Glenarm pier is 25m long, 5.9m wide and leads into deep water (4m at low tide). The marina has pontoons.
- Recreational boat traffic and moorings nearby. The site is quite exposed to the east and there can be litter in the bay.
This site is great for both diving and snorkelling. There are two entry options, either to the south of the beach (for the seagrass bed) or to the north of the beach. The seabed at the southern end of the beach is made up of gently sloping fine sand with areas of seagrass bed about 100m off the shoreline. At the north end of the beach, there are rocky outcrops with dense kelp.
The shallow sandy seabed supports a bed of seagrass Zostera marina. Seagrass beds are listed as a priority habitat in Northern Ireland due to the important role they play in carbon sequestration, sediment stabilisation and provision of nursery grounds for many marine species. Look out for juvenile fish, spider crabs and stalked jellyfish. At the northern end of the beach, the rocky outcrops are covered in kelp, while a variety of fish, bobtail squid and crabs may be seen on the sandy seabed below.
View all species records from this site
A link to the dive site location on the NBN Atlas Northern Ireland website, showing all species records from within a 1km boundary of the site centroid. Any new species records from the site submitted to Seasearch, iRecord, CEDaR Online Recording or iNaturalist will appear here- In an emergency call 999 or 112 and ask for the coastguard.
- Follow VHF radio Channel 16 (156.8 MHz), the international distress frequency.
- Find nearest defibrillator (AED) here
Despite the surge and 2m vis, we had a lovely dive here on Sunday 5th July. Lots of critters hiding in the seagrass!