Cork Sub Aqua Club

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.

Okay, so enough talking, time to go diving!

The weather forecast is wrong as per usual and its actually a gorgeously crisp day with skies so azure blue it almost hurts to look at them.  It’s obviously time to get wet, and get the diving season started in earnest.  I meet Michiel a little early and we complete his fitness test – a new mandatory requirement from CFT – so we hit the water.  Swimming 100m out from Oysterhaven slip, a quick bracing duck dive and then a short tow whilst practicing EAR.  Finally back into the slip.  Michiel heads into to change while I get my camera a look for any signs of photogenic hermit crabs that sometimes may be found close inshore.  Not today, maybe next time.

By the time I give up Dave has towed down the new boat and elected himself to cox.  We all jump into helping prepare the boat and launch it, before sorting, assembling and loading our gear on board.  We elect to try a simple dive out in Newfoundland Bay (that’s “to the left and around a bit” in CSAC parlance).  It appears to be a good choice for as soon as we pull in to our determined dive site we see at least five seals watching curiously our every move.  The come quite close, even to within 15m and Michiel and I are increasingly hopeful of an underwater encounter with these majestical creatures.

Alas it was not to be, but we weren’t disappointed with what we saw.  A variety of different crab species from the tiniest of hermit crabs (I finally got that picture) to devellish looking velvet swimmers, to big bruisers of edible ones.  Anemones and other brightly coloured shells really made for a great first dive of the year…  Back to the slip to recover and tidy up the boat, new covers and all, before heading home for a well deserved hot chocolate.

According to an article in Today’s Irish Times, the South Western Regional Fisheries Board has outlined a new five-year plan which involves encouraging whale-watching and scuba-diving.

I had a quick look at their website and couldn’t find any more details, but it sounds like an interesting development and one which local divers should take an interest in. The motivation is to protect the regional fisheries by encouraging wealth-generating sectors that rely on its protection.

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.

Easter weekend the club went down to Kilcrohane for our first dive weekend away of the season. Easter was particularly early this year, so cold, rain and wind were always going to be on the agenda. We were able to put our brand new custom-built Excalibur RIB out on the water nonetheless. This was the culmination of a lot of effort by members of the club in fundraising, chasing up Sports Capital funding, drawing up detailed specs, inspecting the building process and test-driving and running-in, so we were very happy to see her used for her intended purpose.

The boat was built by Gael Force Ventures in Carrigaline to our own specification. From the beginning, members had a very definite idea of what they wanted to see in their new RIB. Having a large space for kitting up was a very big consideration. Having a slightly larger RIB than the previous ones we’ve used meant that, with a little extra thought put into the design, we could have a space large enough for two pairs of divers to don their gear and complete their buddy checks in comfort at the same time. Secure storage space for bottles, hand-holds for rough weather and ease of entry for divers were also very important considerations.

When it came to engine size, enough power to get up on the plane with ten fully-laden divers was the minimum criterion. That had to be balanced with economy, ease-of-maintenance, and the need to be forgiving to inexperienced coxswains. In the end, we settled for a 175 horsepower Suzuki 4-stroke. A large capacity fuel tank will help to minimise delay and spillage from messing around with extra fuel containers.

As the build progressed members were on hand to inspect how things were going and provide feedback to the rest of the club. As the plans materialised, Jim, our equipments officer, was able to carry the opinions of the club members back to the boat builders and fine-tune the specification. Decisions were made on the ideal dimensions of the A-Frame, fitting of the O2 bottles etc, even as the workers put the finishing touches to the fibreglass hull.

Time will tell if our new boat lives up to all our expectations. With a bit of luck, we’ll get the good weather soon to let her show her full potential, but if the weather stays a little choppy, well she should be able to cope with that too. We’ll be having a little ceremony before the end of the month to welcome her officially to the club and show our appreciation to everybody, in the club and out, who made this possible.