Cork Sub Aqua Club

The Ling rocks are a group of submerged pinnacles only 10 kilometers or so offshore from Oysterhaven near Cork City. Popular with divers and anglers, they should be dived at slack water. Also being so far offshore they require light or northerly winds and a calm sea. The shallowest of the pinnacles has depths of 25 meters even at a neap high tide, but some of the pinnacles have shallowest depths as deep as 33 to 40 meters. You will find several marks on both of the Cork club boats’ GPS for the Lings. The marks above (N51 36.847 W08 19.191) are for the shallowest pinnacle, and are also the marks that Seamus uses. I have dived the Lings with Daunt SAC, and they dive a different slightly deeper pinnacle, near the mark called ‘Lings 4′ on both Cork GPS units.

Because this is blue water and deep, Cork SAC normally insists that divers are qualified to CFT ** or better, and well dived up. Having said that for a * diver needing to log a 30 meter dive before the Club diver test, with either a leading diver or advanced club diver, the Lings are a good option, most of the other dive sites nearby being either too shallow or in the case of the wrecks off Cork Harbour too deep (the Santo at low tide is less than 30 meters). A shot should be dropped so that people can find the pinnacle, but if it is slack water, and if visibility is good, we do not reel off it. For a computer dive using a 30% to 32% nitrox mix, and a 1.4 PPO2, it is possible to enjoy up to 30 minutes of no-decompression bottom time at the shallowest pinnacle. At some of the other marks that high a mix would not allow a deep enough maximum depth .
There is plenty of fish life, congers, wrasse and other species. I have not seen a ling there, maybe the anglers get them all (John Ryan claims to have caught four nearby while we were diving). Large schools of fish are difficult to photograph at that depth, because they keep their distance, also because of the low ambient light at 30 meters, so you will just have to take my word for it that you can also see these. The water is usually very clear and 15 meters visibility is normal, however it can be a bit murkier if there is a bloom. Crayfish (spiny lobsters) are common, I have seen four in five minutes.
This is the best scenic diving to be had within a 40 kilometer radius of Cork City. One or two porpoises are often seen in the area between the Sovereigns and the Lings, but porpoises are timid creatures and don’t seem to come up to boats like dolphins do. The lings are far enough offshore that a whale has been known to surface nearby.