Cork Sub Aqua Club

Finally, a little good weather. Water temperatures reached 14 to 15 Celsius this weekend, and although there was a bit of a bloom about, I had one of the most enjoyable dives I’ve had in a while. We dived in the morning by the Kedges; Fiona, Lucas and myself. The ground was quite open, with an abundance of macrofauna; dogfish, crawfish, butterfish, blennies as well as lots of pollock and plenty of juvenile fish. I heard somebody spotted a seahorse, or maybe a pipefish, but we weren’t that lucky.

The afternoon dive had less life, but interesting ground with lots of nice gullies.

South of the rock the tides bring strong currents ripping past the Old Head, so keep North of the reef that extends from the point of the rock outwards. Drop in near the rock. If you find yourself in a shallow gully in nine or ten metres of kelp, head northwards, up and over a small reef for more depth. Here you’ll find a nice long gully running East to West with depths between twenty and twenty-five metres.

Best dived at slack water, and it’s not recommended to stray too far eastwards from the rock.

The race is on to find where corkonians like to get cold and wet (why is another question entirely).  Will the local favourites like the Sovs and Newfoundland Bay feel the contempt of familiarity and lose out to those once-in-a-season (if that) big-ticket dives like the Bull, or the Fastnet? Will rusty metal beat the allure of pretty fish? Does the high ranking of the Lusitania reveal a secret Yellow Box in the soul of every single-cylinder Kelp Hugger?

Meanwhile, the great Nudibranch debate rages unabated, with, at last count, the withs languishing in eighth place to the withouts third. No doubt there’s still breath in those naked lungs though.

06/07/05: ” If your into the history of the Kowloon and some facts here is a website that gives you the background:

http://www.iol.ie/~donale/Kowloon%20bridge.htm

The wreck lies NE-SE with its bow facing NE, but dont bother with compass bearings, 100,000 tons of metal will put pay to that. And there in lies the biggest problem on the Kowloon. Where the hell are ye, and in which direction are you headed. Infact, the very first time I dropped onto the Kowloon, I landed at 6m in Kelp and had no idea in what direction to head and thought how will I find the Kowloon from here.Little did I know I was sitting on top of it. Its worth noting your depth as that will give you some indication of where you are at.The sides of the Kowloon are at around 12m near the bow and as you work away from the bow, the first part of the lower deck is at 25 meters.You’ll know your on the deck as its covered in iron ore pellets. The deck slopes gently down toward the starboard side, so this is a good way to get your orientation as to which side of the ship your on. If you work along the deck, you should either come to a large bulkhead if your working toward the bow, or pass over the open cargo hold if your working away from the bow. The bulkhead rises to about 10 meters, and forms a wall that runs from either side of the Kowloon. The ship is 40m wide, so while swimming along the bulkhead, you may think your actually swimming along the side of the ship. If you stick to around 12-14m you eventually hit either the port or starboard side of the ship – knowing that everything forward of the bulkhead wall is toward the bow you should be able to navigate along the outside hull of the ship toward the bow. The outside of the hull is full of jewel anonomies and other soft tissue things, you might even find some nudibranks if your that way inclined – looking at micro fauna on one of Europe’s larges wrecks has to be a sad pastime. Pick a depth of 12-14m and work toward the bow – if your on the starboard side you will see the large hawspipe and broken chain where one of the Kowloon’s anchors used to be. Keep working forward and you’ll feel the front of the ship slope and you’ll round the bow. If the viz is good you should see the bulbous bow section below you – drop down to about 20m and you’ll be sitting on the bulbous section – its massive and worth even swimming away a little to get some scale of how big it actually is. If you continue round the bow toward the port side of the ship, again at around 12-14m you should eventually hit the anchor. This again is massive, all 40 tonnes of it. I’m sure Rick will try lift it. You could quite easily miss this – so make sure you keep your depth to around 12m.Further back from the anchor away from the bow, you’ll hit some large openings in the side hull. You can enter the ship quite easily here – there is little or no silt inside, so there is no chance of a silt out.Just beware of some of the jagged edge openings and the water surging in and out. You may have to time you entry and exit with the water flow.

You can work back about 30m inside the ship until you come to a wall – as far as I know this is the inside wall of the bulkhead mentioned above. You should be able to see a large circular hole in the floor – its about 10m in diameter and a ladder runs down to lower floors on the port side. If your on the top floor, you will be able to drop down 1 floor, where a similar size hole awaits, dropping down through this, you should hit a floor with 6 smaller cylindrical wholes about 3m long and 1m wide. I’ve dropped down through one of these holes, but have gone no further – you’ll be at a depth of around 22m at this point. You can easily navigate back up to the second floor and exit out through the hull from any of the 3 floors. Do cover all of this will take you 40-50 minutes – the finners among you may do this a lot quicker – but I would say keep that section to one dive.

If you want to work away from the bow, toward the broken section of the ship’s mid section, then keep to the lower deck at 22-25m where all the iron ore pellets are scattered. This is usually sheltered from the currents, so you should be able to navigate it easily. You should come across an open hold – but I’m a little sketchy on this as its been a while since I’ve dived toward the mid section. Because the Kowloon snapped in half, the stern of the Kowloon is light years away as is a separate dive – even for those who have the fancy fins, so the mid section has a lot of torn metal an broken pipes etc. Even the blind among us should be able to tell that broken twisted steel from the smooth bow section – so that’s a good indication of what end of the ship you are at. Again beware of the broken twisted steel, surges are common, so mind how you go. Note, that if you follow the deck, you could easily swim out of the wreck and onto the seabed and away from the wreck and not even realise it. So if the concentration of debris, metal and iron pellets begins to become sparse, you’re better off turning round, unless your carrying your passport. Because the mid section is deeper, you may have to profile up to the sides of the ship

- there is a very nice profile along the sides of the ship from the mid section heading to the bow. Its like a double hull, with box section compartments 2m wide and 2-3m long and about 2m deep – this is not maybe the best description, but you’ll see them for yourself. You can swim through some of them and they are always full of life. You should be able to profile along either side of the ship from 25m, up to 15m as you work from the midsection back up to the bow.

Some things not to do on the Kowloon:

- Drop over the side, down to 33m to the seabed. There is little to see at the very bottom around most of the ship and all you’ll be doing is looking up at a 20m wall of anonomies. The bottom is sandy mud and despite some Kowloon debris there is little to see. Only at the very back of the mid section where the ship is broken is it worth being on the seabed.

- Spend time fining at 20-25m along the outside of the hull away from the bow – again, there is very little to see unless your chasing nudibranks.

- Because there is a 100,000 tons of steel, stuck in the middle of a very high energy area, surges are very common, the shallower you are, the worse the are. So don’t spend too much time at 6m on the way down

- try and drop over the side of the ship to about 12m, or head for the lower deck at 20m+ – you will get shelter from the surge there.

- Again, because of the surge, be careful when your at the top of the ship sides. Sometime the surge is not bad, but you can get thrown over and back, octo’s, torches, reels and anything else that’s loose can get broken, or snagged.

Apologies, if this was a little long winded – I don’t swear that what’s above is 100% accurate, but its some observations of how I have seen the Kowloon over a number of dives. It would be great if others who have dived it give input also, as the wreck is massive and it is very hard to get a good picture of what its like in one dive.

Happy trails and remember, the only fining required is the one fin kick required to get you back into the rib.”

Cheers

DB

http://www.ruttledge.se/?p=165

http://www.divesitedirectory.co.uk/dive_site_ireland_cork_baltimore_wreck_kowloon_bridge.html

http://www.irishwrecksonline.net/details/KowloonBridge548.htm

http://www.burysac.org.uk/reviews/kbridge2002

http://www.aquaventures.ie/kowloon.htm

o6/11/06: “Rianne Smith in Aquaventures has confirmed that the bow of the  Kowloon bridge has collapsed. The shallowest depth is now 17m. She
mentioned that Jerry had problems finding the wreck recently (which
was unusual) but divers confirmed that it collapsed above the bulbous
bow.

Cheers, Don. “

Position is pretty approximate but that doesn’t matter, since this wreck is partially uncovered and can be easily seen from a good distance away. The bottom at about 15m is quite silty. Plenty of growth around the deck area and lots of holes to stick your torch in, or to get lost in if you’re feeling foolhardy.

Also interesting are the many cars which have turned up in the vicinity of the wreck. Obviously a hazard to road traffic as well as to fishing vessels.

Although it’s suffered a little from being overdived on some of our club holidays to Bere Island, owing to its sheltered position and convenience to Lawrence Cove, it’s a nice enough wreck, and worth the dive.

A good site for a shore dive early in the season before it becomes too overgrown with kelp. Limited parking is available on the pier, which has two sets of steps for access to the water. Depths of up to 20m can be reached without finning too far.

To the north of the pier is a small cave. There can be quite a surge in here at mid-water. Two reefs extend out parallel to the pier, one from the rocks to the south of the pier and another from the promontory beyond.

Like Queen Whats-her-face, Cork Sub Aqua’s RIBs get a bath once a year whether they need it or not. So we all met last Sunday at Jim’s place, stripped off (the boats that is), and gave everything a good dose of power-hose and elbow-grease.

We inventoried the contents and made a note of anything needing replaced before the diving season starts in earnest, which given the spell of good weather we’ve been having lately, shouldn’t be too long. Jim gave the compressor a good clean and took a sample of air for analysis. All set for the weekend away in Durrus and a promised scorcher of a summer.

This site lies near the Kedges and is easily accessible from Baltimore.

Not much remains of the wreck itself, but there’s an interesting swim through if you approach from the north of the rocks. This opens out onto the site of the wreck, where you can see one of the boilers still intact. Moving beyond this, the bottom flattens out quite quickly.

An easily accessible dive from the Oysterhaven slip. Typical depths are 10 to 15 metres.

The Little Sovereign is a small island/large rock at the mouth of Oysterhaven harbour. Its main highlight is the ‘Grotto’. A completely submerged swim-through at the eastern end of the island. Visibility is often poor, so this can be hard to find.