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.

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.

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.

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.

Jim and Donnacha and their fishing rods did their best to depopulate the coastal waters of mackerel and pollock. Rory, Joe, Gerry and Declan checked moorings and were rewarded with bags of crab claws by grateful fishermen. In the end they were asking not to be given any more crab claws. There are only so many you can eat. One of the moorings they checked turned out to be just a paint pot filled with concrete and buoyed. Worryingly another dive club from Dublin had moored to it on the previous Sunday, with overnight gale force winds forecast ! We were told by a wind surfer that it wasn’t actually a mooring and the the other club were alerted to the fact by Gerlyn who tracked them down by the noise of their compressor. They wisely decided to pull the boat before the gale hit.
An attempt to win the talent competition at Lenaghmore Community Centre was abandoned because the lads brought nine-month-old Fionn along and it would have been child cruelty to subject him to the Allihes version of X Factor. Instead we had to be content to lower the standard of singing in Jimmy’s pub enough that it encouraged participation by less musically able locals too. Breaking the tyranny of the talented is our cultural legacy to the music of the area.
House 6 were treated to big brother Allihes style in the form of a CCTV broadcast from a cow shed. This was a bit of a puzzle because all the cows were outside (as city-slicker Gerry can confirm after complaining about being kept awake by mooing). Also it is months away from calving. Donnacha tried to track down the source of the mystery broadcast by pretending to be searching nearby barns for a non-existent dog, but with no success. The grumpy looking Declan pictured above was also kept awake, but by snoring rather than mooing. The Limerick man, without anything more traditionally pointy and metallic to hand finally resorted to throwing a pillow at 4AM.

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.

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.

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.

Because this is blue water and deep, Cork SAC normally insists that divers are qualified to CFT ** or better, and well dived up. Having said that for a * diver needing to log a 30 meter dive before the Club diver test, with either a leading diver or advanced club diver, the Lings are a good option, most of the other dive sites nearby being either too shallow or in the case of the wrecks off Cork Harbour too deep (the Santo at low tide is less than 30 meters). A shot should be dropped so that people can find the pinnacle, but if it is slack water, and if visibility is good, we do not reel off it. For a computer dive using a 30% to 32% nitrox mix, and a 1.4 PPO2, it is possible to enjoy up to 30 minutes of no-decompression bottom time at the shallowest pinnacle. At some of the other marks that high a mix would not allow a deep enough maximum depth .
There is plenty of fish life, congers, wrasse and other species. I have not seen a ling there, maybe the anglers get them all (John Ryan claims to have caught four nearby while we were diving). Large schools of fish are difficult to photograph at that depth, because they keep their distance, also because of the low ambient light at 30 meters, so you will just have to take my word for it that you can also see these. The water is usually very clear and 15 meters visibility is normal, however it can be a bit murkier if there is a bloom. Crayfish (spiny lobsters) are common, I have seen four in five minutes.
This is the best scenic diving to be had within a 40 kilometer radius of Cork City. One or two porpoises are often seen in the area between the Sovereigns and the Lings, but porpoises are timid creatures and don’t seem to come up to boats like dolphins do. The lings are far enough offshore that a whale has been known to surface nearby.

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