Coasteering allows a person to move in the “impact zone” between a body of water and the coast where waves, tides, wind, rocks, cliffs, gullies, and caves come together.
[4] Although all aspects of coasteering have been informally practised by people for a very long time,[1] if only as a means of access to a cut-off cove beyond a headland, the term appears first to have been used in 1973.
In the late 1980s Andy Middleton of Twr-y-Felin Outdoor Centre developed it as a commercially guided recreational activity initially along the cliff coastline of St.Davids in Pembrokeshire in Wales.
The activity then spread to all regions of the UK where there are suitable rocky coasts, including Cornwall, Pembrokeshire, Anglesey and the Highlands and Isles of Scotland.
[13] Impacting with the water surface at this velocity is capable of giving a person temporary paralysis of the diaphragm,[12] a compressed spine, broken bones, or concussion.