Cork Sub Aqua Club

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.

I hadn’t dived the Folia for several years, not because club dives on the Folia are especially rare, (there had been a few already in 2009), but because I just happened to be unavailable whenever one was arranged. So I was looking forward to this. My recollection was that the wreck is really quite impressive. She lies at a depth of 33 to 38 meters several miles off Ardmore Co Waterford, and is within sight of Youghal and Ardmore. Despite some imperfect visibility it was a very enjoyable dive.
The problem of photographing and describing a wreck the size of the Folia is a bit like describing and photographing the grand canyon. It is difficult to convey the impressive scale of a wreck in a series of photographs or words, especially if conditions on the dive were not especially favorable for photography. I would like to dive the wreck again with clearer viz, like I had the previous time I dived, and a fast wide lens. The Folia is one of those dives that people like to do many times because it is probably one of the largest wrecks at a non-decompression diving depth off the south coast. There is always something new to discover. OK the Kowloon Bridge was an order of magnitude larger, but since the bow section collapsed also an order of magnitude less fascinating.

Sometimes known as the Folio, her real name was Folia. Militarily speaking the U-Boat that sank her did a pretty good job by preventing a large cargo of artillery shell casings from reaching the Western Front. The deaths of seven of the crew was the sad price paid. Despite extensive salvage that has destroyed much of the superstructure aft of the boilers there are still many of the shell casings to be found. We saw evidence that salvage continues. In effect she is being turned into a habitat for marine life. There are lots of nooks and crannies on the wreck. This is a good place to see congers. As a consequence of being a cozy home for fish, it gets some anglers, so watch out for hooks and fishing line.

I used a 28% mix, and we had about a 20 minute bottom time with plenty of no-decompression limit to spare, partly due to a miscalculation on my part, we headed back to the shotline a tad early. Launching from Knockadoon was OK, but there were waves coming around the point which made retrieval a bit challenging. Thanks to Brian for towing and coxing, and to Helen for organizing the dive, also Joost for helping us drop the shotline on the correct spot.

For those interested in the history of the wreck there is an article on the Waterford County Museum webpage: http://www.waterfordcountymuseum.org/exhibit/web/Display/article/160/4/?lang=en

Four divers from Cork SAC, Steve Clare myself and Brian went to Cocos Island and Costa Rica in August. Since then quite a few people have been asking me: “when are we going to see your photos from Cocos?”. You see the problem has been that, after my old camera gave up the ghost in 2008 I kinda lost interest in underwater photography for a while, before buying Graham’s old camera to try out an SLR. With one thing and another I only got about half a dozen dives with the SLR before I went to Cocos, and really only decided to bring the camera at the last minute, so I have been a bit shy about showing the photos which I know to be not the best. Nevertheless the dives in Cocos were brilliant and I hope the photos don’t do them too much of an injustice. Anyhow Brian has the better photos, so ask him too!
If you ever saw the start of ‘Jurassic Park’, the jungle covered island that the intrepid dinosaur seekers fly into is Isla Del Coco: or Cocos island. The island, and the waters around it, are a national park of Costa Rica. Eight park rangers and maybe some coast guard are the only residents. To put it in an Irish context, Cocos is about the size of Valentia Island, maybe a bit smaller. It is a thirty six hour boat trip from Puntarenas (The main pacific port of Costa Rica). It is steep with dense foliage, and volcanic in origin. The coastline, apart from a few bays, consists mainly of steep cliffs down which numerous waterfalls cascade. According to Wikipedia it gets an an average annual rainfall of over 7,000 mm (275 in). That is about seven times the annual rainfall that Cork gets. There is a dry season and a wet season. We went in the wet season. The boat has a rainwater collection system. Long hot showers are not a problem, the tap water is drinkable, and unique in my experience of liveaboards elsewhere: in Egypt or Australia; there is a laundry service aboard ! But it didn’t rain that much, a bit for the first few days, the sea was 27 to 29 degrees C, and we were glad of a bit of cloud cover because when the sun shone it was almost too hot. All the waterfalls are very atmospheric, like a lost world, but the amount of fresh water during the wet season tends to affect underwater visibility a bit. Dry season it seems is clearer but with fewer fish.
Enough about annual rainfall and laundry, what about the sharks? There are many to see, on every dive, and sometimes your field of vision is filled with them. So dense that the hammerheads almost look like flocks of birds wheeling and swooping above. Not just Hammerheads, but also silver tips, white tips, black tips (which we didn’t see), galapagos sharks, silkies (which kinda look like galapagos sharks except to an expert), whale sharks (which another boat saw). The difference between white tips and silver tips is that white tips have white tips just on dorsal fin and top of tail and are smaller, silver tips are larger and have a silver trailing edge to all their fins. I have seen big sharks before, even hammerheads, but never the huge schools that you see at Cocos. Plenty of rays too including manta, marble ray, and mobula. The usual reef wildlife that would amaze you elsewhere: moray, turtles, lobsters and all, seem almost to be bit players, with the sharks as the stars of the show.
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Octopus

Declan Garnish Pier

The first Saturday was the only day that no diving was possible due to weather. Sunday and Monday followed the pattern of a brief respite from overnight winds in the morning and early afternoon before it blew up again later. But two dives (albeit with lumpy boat trips) were possible both days. From Tuesday we were able to travel further afield round to the south side of Dursey Island.
Drift dives proved to be unexpectedly popular. I have seen four planned drift dives ever with Cork SAC (intentional ones as opposed to mis-timed slack water) and two of those were last week. It is something we should do a bit more often because they are a blast. We calculated that on the second drift dive on Friday, one buddy pair must have traveled almost two miles in 45 minutes. Unlike in Renvyle, when the first night dive was a highlight, this year the traditional night dive was nothing to write home about, so I won’t blog about it either. By Thursday things had calmed down enough for a dive at Crow head (where the octopus posed for the camera). By Friday my favourite dive site: the Cow was dive-able and that was a fabulous dive. Saturday we went back to the dive sites nearer Garnish Pier to allow the boats to be pulled earlier. The best diving was Thursday and Friday.
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Fivebeard Rockling

Bullen’s Bay lies to the east of the Old Head of Kinsale so it is a good spot for a shore dive, snorkel or night dive if the wind is Northerly westerly or south westerly. There is a mixture of sandy and rocky sea bed types with a reef a little offshore that is exposed from mid to low tide. Depths of between 5 and 7 meters are normal at high tide. During the summer there is plenty to see with pipefish being fairly numerous, and dogfish, even cuttlefish. During the winter it is a bit more sparse but there is always the chance of finding something a bit unusual such as the fivebeard rockling pictured opposite.

If the posts on this blog have tempted you to take up diving and you live near Cork then:

Cork Sub aqua club is looking to recruit about fourteen beginners with no prior diving experience to begin instruction and pool training in November 2008. The training will be towards CFT and CMAS one star and two star certification. Training is free of charge except for pool costs (should be about 100 euro); but you will have to join CFT and Cork SAC. Training nights will be Mondays 7PM ( a little bit earlier on pool nights to allow time to get changed), with theory classes and pool work on alternate weeks. The training will be in Ringaskiddy near Carrigaline about 15KM from Cork.

A medical will be required, you should also be able to swim 200 meters in a pool (any style and not timed).

You will eventually be expected to get your own equipment but for initial training we can borrow from existing members. If you had a wetsuit or semi-dry to begin with that would be good.

The one star course is planned to run until mid December 2008.
This qualifies you to dive to 25 meters (obviously after some qualifying work in the sea, and becoming dived up to that depth) with a two star diver, or thirty meters under certain limited conditions.

The CMAS certification is recognized world wide.

Two star course will run in February.

We will also take people with prior qualifications but as part of a separate crossover course to run in January 2009.

Contact 086 1089435 if you are interested.

The wreck of the Santo lies in water up to 35 meters deep (depending on tide) to the south east of Roches point. It is a long boat trip from Oysterhaven, so we have also dived her out of Crosshaven instead. When we last dived her on a spring low tide she was about 30 meters down. She was a dredger, and her most distinctive feature is the chain of buckets if these can be found. The Mark ‘Santo2′ on the Cork SAC GPS can be used to drop a shot close to the anchor. Reeling east or a little north east from the anchor the boiler can be found. Beyond the boiler there should be a big sprocket and stretching away from that the chain of buckets which are at least a meter in diameter. I should point out that the bucket chain shown above was taken on a dive a few years ago, my buddy and I failed to find them on the most recent dive. If visibility is poor they can be difficult to locate. The wreck is small, but seems to be comparable in size to the Aud, though in fact she was only about a fifth the size. Her boiler is upright but with large holes and has formed a home for fish, which seem to be abundant on the wreck: pouting and cod in the boiler, but also conger, lobster and cuckoo wrasse around the wreck. You can find YouTube video of a blonde ray on the Santo from John Ryan of NMCI SAC. The Santo sank in 1900 on her way from Scotland to Formosa (then part of Japan), now Taiwan.

Cork Sub Aqua Club contains a few members who mainly dive on Wednesdays through the summer. They are joined by larger numbers of Sunday or Saturday regulars too, but some members hardly every dive Wednesdays, or haven’t for years. The Wednesday dives usually finish shortly before dusk, and tend to always leave from Oysterhaven. At various times, if tides and weather permit, there can be slightly earlier dives on Friday afternoon and these can venture further, to the Lings or the Aud perhaps. The Wednesday dives don’t really aim for the wow factor, they are simply a nice break from the midweek routine. They are rarely very challenging in terms of depth or distance traveled, so they attract a more relaxed crowd. Usually a smaller crowd too, adding to the easygoing atmosphere on a less crowded boat. The relatively laid-back atmosphere suits people whose jobs allow them to make it to the site by 6:30, (or 6PM a bit earlier or later in the year). It also suits divers who are busy transporting their kids to activities on the weekend, and wouldn’t otherwise get an opportunity to escape for a bit of underwater peace and quiet. If a boat is already on the mooring, or if it is mid-summer, or if there is a dry coxn then the dives can venture further afield, sometimes around the old-head, but normally they stick to a seven or eight kilometer radius from the slip. The Wednesday dives rarely involve depths of more than twenty meters.
The visibility underwater is usually reasonable, even if the weather isn’t always. If the weather is good then things are a bit more crowded, but there is still a chance to enjoy the late summer evening with a mid-week dive, and maybe a nice sunset on the way back. In September the dives can almost be like night dives. There is always the prospect of seeing something especially good: a sunfish breaching, big shoal of mackerel, congers, a porpoise or dolphins, or maybe even a leather backed turtle. Pipefish tend to be a speciality of the area. The spectacular sometimes happens in an ordinary setting, we are quite used to seeing it, so we sometimes don’t notice. Even if the weather is a bit rotten, as it has tended to be in July and early August 2008, what else would you be doing on a wet Wednesday night ? Sitting at home watching Coronation Street ?

Sunday morning 8AM at Aughrusmore pier near Cleggan. Dave consults the chart. The weather doesn’t look too bad in the Harbour, but there were big waves and white horses out at sea. We had an eventful time towing up yesterday, basically one boat had to go back to Cork due to trailer problems. But two boats made it. Dave made the dificult decision not to launch this morning due to the weather, it was a marginal decision, but the right one. Shore dive Sunday afternoon. We used the facilities of Scubadive west. Lots of pipefish (both snake pipefish and greater pipefish), Scallops, a small conger and a tompot blenny sharing a cave.

Thanks very much to Rory, for towing up his boat and coxing for the week.

Monday we dived the east side of High Island. The ground was pretty good, but not as good as the west side as we would discover later in the week. Pretty flat at thirty meters, it got much better as we got shallower, above twenty meters. Diving with Trish and Lucas we saw two big Congers.

For the last dive of the day we went around to the west side of the island.

Tuesday we were again able to get around to the better west side of High Island. A playful seal pup hung out with Clare and Lisa for their dive. In the afternoon we dived again at the west side of High Island. This time we dived a bit nearer the edge at a wall that had plenty of crayfish and lobsters proving that the fishermen don’t get them all.
Brendan cycled up from Cork. Well done !

Wednesday again at the west side of High Island. A 40 meter dive with lots of curious cuckoo wrasse checking us out. That night, with deckchair and white wine provided for the shore marshals; James, Lisa, Gerry, Trish and Dave R did a night dive that had the eyes of lots of cuttlefish shining back at our torches from the sea bed, small brill buried in the sand too and a sea scorpion. We were so thrilled with the cuttlefish that eight people decided to try a night dive the following evening.

Thursday. No boat diving but you don’t always need boats to dive. A few people did a 38 meter shore dive at a sheltered cove by Killary fjord and were rewarded by seeing some thorn-backed rays. The night dive went well but there was not the same abundance of cuttlefish as on Wednesday, though they were seen by Steve and Trish who ventured further out than the others.

Friday. the weather had finally calmed down enough in the morning for us to go beyond High Island so we headed to spotted rock. Watched by loads of seals (impossible to count because they kept ducking below the surface and coming back up again to fool us). We dived a wall that dropped from four meters to about fifty and met a lobster who had probably gotten big enough that it will no longer fit into a pot and ought to last well into a well deserved lobster old age.

On land there was also some wildlife to be seen, some species easier to identify than others. Ireland has only one native species of lizard, so the lizards seen by several people nearby the pier must have been: Lacerta vivipara. Nearby there were bright blue damsel-flies of which Ireland has several species, most of them living in bogs, and requiring more expert identification than I can provide.

Saturday back to Cork.

Two Star Tests Oysterhaven 27 July 2008

Originally uploaded by riordan_david.

James Branich, Michiel De Rooij, and Stephen Barry along with Candidates from Blackwater SAC and NMCI SAC at their Club Diver tests. All the Candidates passed, Congratulations ! Stephane Portrait, and Finbarr Murphy from Blackwater were Mon 2 testers, along with Declan O’Grady Lucie Kirby and Don MCCarthy form Cork, Fiona Duggan participated as a Mon 1. Olin O’Farrell Dave Riordan and Gerry Horan helped out.

The NMCI candidates John Ryan and Will Jagoe are the first ever to complete the certification from that club which as only been in existence for a few years.