Diving, Snorkelling & Eco-Tours round West Cork's rugged Coastline
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Saturday, May 29, 2010
Festival
This weekend head on down to Baltimore for the Wooden Boat and Seafood Festival. Build your own boat with prizes for design, floatability and yes - sail it in the race! Traditional boat races, parades, kids crab fishing competition and the wonderful food market selling the best that Cork has on offer. Music in the square and free plates of seafood with Guinness products.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wreck Diving Ireland
Next weekend (June bank holiday) for those interested and dived up, we're planning on doing the Kowloon on Saturday and the Sub on Sunday. Slacks are good around neap tides and there are still spaces on the rhib"Vagabond" sorry - "Wave Chieftain" hardboat is fully booked). Contact rianne@aquaventures.ie or call 028-20511 to book.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Night Dive
Anyone interested in a night dive tomorrow (Tue 25 May), meet at Aquaventures Dive Centre for 9 p.m. You'll need a torch - please book by phone or email today (rianne@aquaventures.ie).
Sunday, May 23, 2010
ISA Diver Coxswain Course
Congratulations to Liam Keohane, Dan Hartnett & Paddy Finn on completing the ISA Diver Cox'n course over the last 2 days. It was a pleasure to have you with us and we wish you and all the members of Limerick Sub Aqua Club happy "boating" and diving with "Plassey Bird". You missed a sighting of basking sharks at the harbour's mouth after you'd gone home!
Jerry & Rianne
Jerry & Rianne
A beautiful bright blue sky woke us yesterday morning and we could look forward to a sunny day on and in the water. Two boats went out with divers. One to Tonelunga Rock on the north side of Cape Clear, just beyond the harbour entrance, the other to the northwest side of Kedge Island - a dive site we call the Arches. The visibility was better here than around Cape and the sandy bottom between walls, gullies and reefs reflected the light well. We had a couple of seals following us, showing off their agility and keeping an eye on what we were doing and where we changed direction. The second dive was East of Spain Point, again with gullies and reefs teaming with fish and pretty colours on the walls (anemones, urchins, starfish of all sizes including the purple and orange bloody henry, sponges and deadman's fingers galore). The lads with me were doing a few buoyancy skills as it was their first dive of the season. Despite relatively low temperatures we did two dives of just over 40 minutes and 18 to 19 mtr depth including our safety stops. Baltimore harbour is still relatively quiet with few boats, but it will no doubt fill up quickly, particularly next weekend with the Wooden Boat Festival and Sea Food Festival activities.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Diving this weekend
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Diver Cox'n Training
This weekend Aquaventures will be on the water more than in it - as Limerick Sub-Aqua Club have acquired a nice new rhib and three of the club members are doing their ISA Dive Coxswain course with us. We'll be dropping some divers in the water too, as part of the skills practical and assessments on typical dive sites including a drift dive. The forecast is good and although there are classroom lessons involved too, a lot of the "work" is practical based so we look forward to perhaps spotting some basking sharks and dolphins around Sherkin and Cape Clear.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Night Diving
Last night's sky was littered with stars, no rain or wind and perfect for a night dive in Trafraska. Temperature again was 12 degrees and with low tide, we snorkelled out to gain a bit of depth and dropped into 6 metres for our descent. The visibility was excellent and there were a couple of huge spider crabs. One was just enjoying his dinner when our lights obviously disturbed him. He gave us an angry look, then took off from his perch on the wall and absailed, legs wide apart which must have measured at least half a metre, landing like a space craft in front of our faces. We reached one spot where there were loads of fish whilst other areas were totally deserted except for all manner of crabs. All cracks and holes in the wall had life inside peaking out such as smiley tompot blennies, gobies and baby conger. There were the usual urchins, common starfish, bloody henry and dahlia anemones. We had a pleasant 34 minute dive with maximum depth of 7.7 mtrs (nice and easy). Unfortunately there was no moon, hence no phosphorescence. Our UKC8 torches were wonderful and bright and we didn't need our back-ups. I love night diving but it does get too late in the height of summer when it doesn't get dark until after 11 pm
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Social Media
We're learning .................... and have set up a proper facebook page for Aquaventures Diving & Snorkelling (as well as the personal facebook pages for Jerry and Rianne - please become a fan or friend.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Diving in Lough Hyne
Despite fine settled weather, there are few divers around. We therefore resorted to getting permits for Lough Hyne to do some PADI specialty training (new drysuit for a dive buddy). The viz was around 8 to 10 mtrs and water temperature 12 degrees with plenty of fish life and a good variety of creepy crawly animals on the silty bottom and rocky walls. We spotted plenty of scallops of all sizes and the small ones were "flapping" or swimming around when starfish got too close for comfort - always a nice sight.
The one thing that stood out though was the presence of nudibranch eggs everywhere, on rocks, walls, shells - truly amazing in colour and shape (and more than I have ever seen). Of course this was a dive where I didn't have the camera - isn't that always the case!
We've enjoyed light northerly winds for a number of weeks now which meant the locations west of Baltimore were all good for easy shore dives and good viz. The hardboat will get back into the water for the June bank holiday and we'll look forward to doing the Kowloon Bridge and U260 that weekend with excellent neap tides. There are still some spaces left if anyone is interested.
The one thing that stood out though was the presence of nudibranch eggs everywhere, on rocks, walls, shells - truly amazing in colour and shape (and more than I have ever seen). Of course this was a dive where I didn't have the camera - isn't that always the case!
We've enjoyed light northerly winds for a number of weeks now which meant the locations west of Baltimore were all good for easy shore dives and good viz. The hardboat will get back into the water for the June bank holiday and we'll look forward to doing the Kowloon Bridge and U260 that weekend with excellent neap tides. There are still some spaces left if anyone is interested.
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