In another entry from SCUBA magazine's 2025 writing competition, A Dive to Remember, Jon Bunker offers a personal perspective on the nightlife of Hive beach in Dorset, where he carried out his 300th dive.
Briefing:
Hive beach is nestled by the village of Burton Bradstock, toward the westernmost end of Dorset’s 18-mile Chesil beach. Typically dived during the day as a relatively shallow training site, it truly comes alive at night, especially over the sand flats which are seemingly barren by day.
The dive:
Derived from the Old English ‘Hithe’ meaning ‘safe landing place’, the beach was historically frequented by an inshore fleet of mackerel fishermen. Today, just a few boats remain, but the National Trust operate a large car park here throughout the year, with easy access to the beach attracting visitors from afar. This is in no small part due to the Hive Beach Café, which offers up seafood meals with an emphasis on local food links.
Completing the 300th dive | Nudibranch traversing seagrass
The National Coastwatch Institute are also present here, and indeed, it might be worth informing them of your movements if heading in. Their hut above the beach normally does indicate the high tide times for the day, and to get the tides right you ideally want to be heading in between two hours before and four hours after high water (Portland), when the current is wafting eastward toward Cogden and West Bexington, rather than westward to Freshwater and West Bay.
Care should be taken by the entry point toward the crumbling western cliffs; while the site is generally shallow, the beach does shelve off deceptively quickly at the water’s edge. Upon entry, you descend down onto a mixture of pea-sized gravel and larger boulders. These extend into a reefy ‘arm’ that leads you gradually southwards away from the shore.
A common dragonet eyes the photographer | Painted goby on the substrate
Completing my 300th dive here back in July of 2018, myself and my buddy entered at sunset, just as the denizens of the rocky reef were starting to make their appearance. With the bloom having dropped off, sunbeams streaked through the water and we grinned at each other, thrilled at the prospect of having it all to ourselves.
Out on the sandflats, blonde and small-eyed rays glided by, with roving lobsters, young congers and nurse hounds likewise cruising for a meal. To our delight, we found the softer sand by the reef yielded scores and scores of little cuttles, readily engaging in fierce turf wars and erupting from the seabed only to bury themselves back in it as we came by. As we circled the flats and came back up the beach I was buzzed by a huge grey mullet in the shallows, apparently attracted by our lights as we clambered upwards.
Debrief:
With so many of Dorset’s beaches increasingly overfished these days, Hive Beach at night offers something of a haven for biodiversity, with a range of habitats and species guaranteed to put on a show.
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This article was originally published in SCUBA magazine, Issue 159, October 2025. For more membership benefits, visit bsac.com/benefits.
Images in this online version may have been substituted from the original images in SCUBA magazine due to usage rights.
