Cork Sub Aqua Club

On Sunday seven divers departed Oysterhaven in gorgeous autumn sunshine to dive the City of Chicago. Conditions were ideal and after descending to the shallow shipwreck below divers enjoyed a variety of activities including a subaquatic golf ball hunt and a spot of underwater juggling. For those looking for more orthodox enjoyment there was something for everyone with dogfish, crayfish, lobster and nudibranchs all making an appearance.

However, as was the case when we encountered basking sharks after diving the Bream Rock earlier in the summer, the dive was somewhat overshadowed by the appearance of a small sunfish half way back to Oysterhaven. There was some commotion on the boat and after a little “will we, won’t we” discussion several divers donned snorkel gear and went for a closer look. For his part, the sunfish was happy to stay near the surface and provide a few minutes of entertainment (and plenty of photo opportunities).

The second dive of the day was at Black Head where there are some nice rocky gullies. Conger eels, lobster, crayfish and friends were all present but for this diver the highlight of the day was the guest appearance by the sunfish.

The first week in August is normally when the club takes a trip a little further afield than our regular diving takes us. Last week saw around sixteen club members head west to the Ring of Kerry for a week diving in Portmagee.

Those who made the trip enjoyed great food, wine and comraderie and were also treated once again to the spectacular scenery (both above and below the water) of the west of Ireland. On the critter front the usual assortment of crayfish, lobster, dogfish and conger eels all made an appearance. Thursday was a special treat as many divers encountered octupuses.

Anyway, enough with the words, the following short video provides a few of the highlights…

While the club dive officer and her faithful assistant have been off on summer holidays for the last week, we’ve still managed to take in a spot of diving on the Great Barrier Reef out of Cairns. We signed up for a four day trip to Cod Hole with Taka dive.

Features of the diving included giant potato cod, free swimming olive seasnakes, moray eels and turtles plus the usual fare in the tropics; reef sharks, rays, cuttlefish, nudibranchs and of course, anemonefish.

However, the undisputed highlight of the trip was a visit to one of our dive sites by a small pod of dwarf minke whales. These magnificent (and somewhat curious) animals took a while to warm to the snorkelers but gradually gained in confidence until they were passing as close as a couple of metres to the group. Fantastic!

Cork Sub Aqua Club were designated ‘club of the week’ in yesterdays Cork Independent.

Click HERE for the full article.

Well done Tim for organising this exposure for the club.

The June bank holiday weekend saw CorkSAC head to Fethard on Sea, Co. Wexford for our usual mix of diving and socialising.

On Saturday morning, in bright sunshine and beneath the walls of Slade Castle, we made our preparations to dive Three Mile Rock. Diving out of Slade harbour presents its own challenges as the harbour drains almost completely at low tide, however we were lucky enough to get the boat into the water as the harbour was filling.

Three Mile Rock is a tidal dive and even at slack tide there was a strong current on the way to the bottom, however this disappeared once we dropped below a depth of 20m. We continued down to about 30m and began spiraling our way back up the rock. It was a nice scenic dive and presented divers with a who’s who of Irish diving including Conger, Crayfish, Lobster, Ling and a large shoal of Coalfish. Rockcook, which appear electric blue along their backs under torchlight, were also plentiful.

The second split of divers took in a scenic dive nearer to Hook head while we had lunch and prepared for the much anticipated trip to the Girl Arlene.

The Girl Arlene, a fishing trawler wrecked in almost 30m of water, did not disappoint. On descent we were amazed at the abundance of fish life. Predominantly poor cod, or pouting, but there were also plenty of ling, some conger eels and lobster. Those looking closely were also likely to find butterfish (gunnel), blennies, dragonets and sea scorpions.

After the fourth split had returned from another scenic dive off Hook Head we realised exactly the extent to which Slade Harbour drains at low tide. We could not get the boat anywhere near the slip . Thankfully, the kind folks from Hook SAC were on hand to use their specialised equipment (an Interantional 784 tractor) to extract our boat from the mud.

The tides were not really working in our favour on Sunday so we decided to go back to the Girl Arlene (twice) as it was one of the few sites we knew we could dive mid tide. It is true testament to this dive that while some members dived this site three times in two days, it seemed to get better each dive. For this diver, the treat on Sunday was a small octopus spotted on the second dive. He swam briefly across the bottom and set down again where he performed a colour change that a small group of us were luck enough to witness.

It is fair to say we could not have had such a good weekend without the help of the Hook Sub Aqua Club. They retrieved our boat for us both days and filled our bottles Saturday and Sunday night. Thanks guys, your efforts are greatly appreciated.

The slideshow photos can be seen on Flickr here -> Hook Head – June ’10

A conger sticks his nose out from under a rock.

Almost a week before school kids all over Ireland begin their state exams, Wednesday night saw normal club diving take place amidst diver coxwain exams. The cork boat was full with divers, instructors and two of our own ‘L’ plate candidates undergoing their exam.

There were also two candidates from the UCC club. As they were good enough to bring another boat (and they needed divers to cover), Neil and I were lucky enough to hitch a ride to Black Head and dive from their boat.

My buddy was a little aprehensive as they had dived this site the week before and the feedback was less than spectacular. However, a week can be a long time in diving.

This fella is on the defensive.

This time we dropped in much closer to the headland and forty minutes underwater passed in what seemed like seconds. The terrain was nice, featuring some small gullies and we were kept entertained by several lobsters and a couple of conger eels for good measure.

To cap the evening off the UCC lads showed there coxwain credentials by providing sweets aplenty.

I’d like to thank the UCC lads for the boat trip and congratulate the candidates from both clubs , all of whom passed their exam.

Yesterday saw our highest day of activity so far on the blog, and this brought a fitting end to an already record-breaking month of 1,377 hits.

A big thanks to everyone who’s helped to spread the word, and of course special thanks to those who’ve made a contribution. If you haven’t logged in yet, please do and try out the more interactive elements, such as the groups. And of course leave your comments, especially the nice ones.

A very early start, and the slightly early birth of a child meant that there were only five takers for this dive. Light winds and a relatively calm sea gave us the chance to dive a wreck that none of the five of us had dived before. The early start was to avoid mid-tide but in the end there was very little current. The smaller of the two club boats, the Humber, was large enough, but I began to doubt this when we started to load all the gear for two dives into the bow. Fortunately the load was evened out when we put Jim’s lunch down at the stern end.
The stern and midships section of the Sloop HMS Mignonette lies in 35 meters near Galley Head Co Cork. It is about a nine mile spin from Union Hall. She was a small warship and is quite broken up. The bow section is so far away from the stern that it is a separate dive. The stern and midships part of the wreck is just about big enough to cover in about 25 minutes, which is what you will get using a 30% mix. Being a small wreck the shot has to be dropped more exactly, but the boilers show up well on the sounder. The GPS co-ordinates we used dropped the shot a little to the west of the boiler but having seen that this was the case from the sounder we finned a few meters east to find the wreck.

She struck a mine on St Patrick’s day 1917 and sank. The mine had been laid by a U-Boat. There was either no loss of life, or casualties not known. Five days earlier the Mignonette had helped rescue the crew of SS Malmanger that had also struck a mine. The day after, the 18th, another minesweeper: Alyssum went down 1½ miles further offshore. The wreck has lots of small barrell shaped objects with rounded ends that we assumed to be munitions, shells for the gun. We had been warned that some of these contain phosphorus so not to disturb them. There is no big gun aboard, that was salvaged some time ago and taken to Kinsale. We failed to find the Prop. But there was lots of stuff to see. The Great War flower class sloops were mainly used as minesweepers and were built with an old engine design, and as a result were slow, but they were not intended to escort convoys or catch the enemy, so slow was not a problem. They had a triple hull, and obviously this didn’t save the Mignonette, but maybe it helped save the crew. She had two boilers, and two funnels, but only a single propellor. To be honest I only saw one boiler, but others saw both. There is an engine and what seems to be an electrical generator.

It is dark at that depth, and the light was a little green from plankton, but on the wreck viz was reasonably clear. The seabed was rocky and flat with a little seaweed. There were plenty of small fish on the wreck. Wildlife included Cuckoo Wrasse, Pouting, and conger.

We left from Union Hall, and lunched at red strand. We brought second bottles for a dive on the “Norwegian” that did not work out as a wreck dive but was a pleasant scenic dive.

Those who ventured out into Cork Harbour today witnessed a special treat. After a dive on the Bream Rock a group of playful basking sharks swam in close proximity to the boat. They continued their crowd pleasing behaviour by making several passes in the water by the divers who had now become snorkelers.

What a way to cap off a weekend of great weather!

This small octopus find himslef in the spotlight while exposed on the sandy bottom.

A good crowd of club members made their way to Dingle last week for the bank holiday weekend. Those down early enough on Friday were treated to incredible visibility diving in Smerwick harbour.

We were lucky enough to have good weather Saturday morning and took the chance to take both boats to Great Blasket Island and dive the wreck of the Three Brothers.

Saturday afternoon saw us take the shorter spin to Parkmore point. This site boasts spectacular scenic underwater gullies and provided the suprise of the weekend when numerous octopuses were sited. Once the dispute regarding  the correct pluralisation of the word ‘octopus’ was settled (or so we thought) all agreed that the site was worth revisiting Sunday morning.

Sunday afternoon saw the small group of divers who could tear themselves away from the rugby visit a shallow site just outside Dingle Harbour known as “Fungi’s Bedroom”.

Fungi's Bedroom: A shallow but scenic dive.

This gorgeous cave-like swimthrough again provided outstanding scenery.

However, the real fun was on the way to the site. Fungi, Dingle’s resident dolphin, obviously found the outboard on the humber to his liking as he left two boat loads of tourists scratching their heads and followed us from the harbour to the divesite where he proceeded to circle the dive boat for the duration of the dive.

The weekend provided a wonderful showcase of what is great about Irish diving, stunning scenery, interesting critters and good visibility.

More photos can be found here.