Cork Sub Aqua Club

The first week in August is normally when the club takes a trip a little further afield than our regular diving takes us. Last week saw around sixteen club members head west to the Ring of Kerry for a week diving in Portmagee.

Those who made the trip enjoyed great food, wine and comraderie and were also treated once again to the spectacular scenery (both above and below the water) of the west of Ireland. On the critter front the usual assortment of crayfish, lobster, dogfish and conger eels all made an appearance. Thursday was a special treat as many divers encountered octupuses.

Anyway, enough with the words, the following short video provides a few of the highlights…

This small octopus find himslef in the spotlight while exposed on the sandy bottom.

A good crowd of club members made their way to Dingle last week for the bank holiday weekend. Those down early enough on Friday were treated to incredible visibility diving in Smerwick harbour.

We were lucky enough to have good weather Saturday morning and took the chance to take both boats to Great Blasket Island and dive the wreck of the Three Brothers.

Saturday afternoon saw us take the shorter spin to Parkmore point. This site boasts spectacular scenic underwater gullies and provided the suprise of the weekend when numerous octopuses were sited. Once the dispute regarding  the correct pluralisation of the word ‘octopus’ was settled (or so we thought) all agreed that the site was worth revisiting Sunday morning.

Sunday afternoon saw the small group of divers who could tear themselves away from the rugby visit a shallow site just outside Dingle Harbour known as “Fungi’s Bedroom”.

Fungi's Bedroom: A shallow but scenic dive.

This gorgeous cave-like swimthrough again provided outstanding scenery.

However, the real fun was on the way to the site. Fungi, Dingle’s resident dolphin, obviously found the outboard on the humber to his liking as he left two boat loads of tourists scratching their heads and followed us from the harbour to the divesite where he proceeded to circle the dive boat for the duration of the dive.

The weekend provided a wonderful showcase of what is great about Irish diving, stunning scenery, interesting critters and good visibility.

More photos can be found here.

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.
Read the rest of this entry →