Cork Sub Aqua Club

Pretty Good visibility and some reasonable weather helped make this a very good weekend’s diving. We normally try to pick a sheltered spot for Easter with some alternate sites to choose from if the wind strength or direction turns out to not be ideal. Dingle has nearby Smerwick as an option if the wind is westerly or southerly, but in the end it was northwesterly which made the dive sites around Dingle (Crow Rock, The Gravelly), and those near Ventry like Parkmore point, even the south east side of the Great Blasket accessible. As usual thornback rays were seen at The Gravelly, Octopuses are a dingle special, one was seen again at Parkmore Point. I felt a bit guilty as I tucked into a big lunchtime plate of calamari at the Dingle Marina cafe, at the fate of it’s cephalopod cousins the squid, which sort of lack that charisma. Speaking of charismatic wildlife, here is always the occasional appearance of the other star of the Dingle wildlife show: Fungi the bottlenose dolphin to entertain us on the way in and out of the harbour. Some of us may have seen a minke whale on the way to the Blaskets (too far away to be sure), and apparently we missed a basking shark at about three meters depth on the Three Brothers (which divers from the UCD club, who arrived as we were diving, spotted as we were about to leave).
The highlight for many will have been the Three Brothers, a wrecked steel trawler, off the Great Blasket, and with some excellent viz for April. The boat ride was a bit arduous, with a cold wind and some choppy waves, and long enough to put the endurance of the human bladder to the test on the way back. We would have brought two boats and two bottles except that the Humber steering had problems when we launched it on the Friday. With the Humber not exactly adrift, but not steerable, and with two other people having swum out to give advice and assistance, Lucie eventually headed out on the other boat to rescue her husband.
On the social side of events Cathy from Daunt graciously invited us to a barbeque expertly cooked by Chris Crouch on Saturday Night, and a very good time was had by all.

Night Dive Daunt Rock

Ling on Night Dive

It is getting to the time of year again when the dusk is soon enough for a night dive to be at a reasonable hour (neither midnight nor the middle of the afternoon). With the boat conveniently moored at brightly lit and easily navigable Crosshaven, we headed out on Friday evening to dive the Daunt Rock. The trick is to kit up while there is still some twilight and have darkness fall just after you leave the surface. We timed it perfectly. Joost had the good idea of attaching a light stick to a surface marker boy that he towed on the dive. Gerry, who was coxing was able to follow it fairly well after darkness fell. With a neap tide there was little current and a half moon to help us navigate back to Crosshaven. The fish life is fairly tame on a night dive, some of the fish are actually asleep. Others such as Congers that would normally be holed up during daylight are out and about at night. Also Ling which I was able to photograph despite some challenging lighting conditions. We saw several small congers (or maybe the same one several times !). There is some metal on the Daunt rock, evidence of the fact that it was once the cause of some shipwrecks. The rock is buoyed, with a red lateral mark (I would have expected an isolated danger mark). You have probably seen the buoy many times from nearby Roberts’ Cove.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.