Diving in Ireland

Dublin Bay, Ireland, 2007

Before moving to Ireland I did some googling to find out what's the diving here about, but I didn't find too much concrete information. There were not so many Irish underwater galleries on the web, most of the search results were links to diving clubs and organizations. Vague statements saying that "Ireland is perfectly situated for scuba diving" or that "Ireland has couple of the best diving locations in Europe" I couldn't take too seriously, especially after these not too fruitful gallery searches, so I took the risk and decided to find out myself. Now, I have been diving here for several months so I'll write a short text about what I've discovered.

Scuba diving in Ireland is very nice and attractive. It is not marvellous, mainly because of the changing and a bit unpredictable conditions, but when you are lucky, it is a great fun. I'll give more practical information in the end of this article.

I moved to Ireland in October, when diving season closes because of the conditions on the sea, so I had to wait until March. I was impatiently walking in the port wondering what's there, under the water surface. The first aquatic species I saw were seals in Dun Laoghaire port. It was a nice surprise, to see that they live in the city, but on the other hand, although they are cute, they are really massive. I would say larger males can easily reach two hundreds kilograms, and their head is as big as the biggest dog's head you've ever seen multiplied by two. So I started to ask about their behaviour. What I found out is that seals are not dangerous and occasionally they swim very close to scuba divers, sometimes pulling their fins with curiosity. However, the situation can be more serious if there are young seals among them. Seals are protective and can bump into divers, occasionally they can bite. Many scuba divers don't like them, which doesn't surprise me - I really wouldn't like to be hit by a seal three times bigger than me. In Dublin, there are couple of seals living in Howth, Dun Laoghaire and Bullock Harbour.

Irish sea has lots of sea anemones, many more than Mediterranean Sea in Croatia. They form beautiful and interesting gardens.

Sea urchins are common sight as well. Unfortunately some of the scuba divers crush them to attract and feed fish. The urchins are quite big here, exceeding twenty centimetres easily. They are white in colour, rather than black ones in Mediterranean, which makes harder to take picture of them - they reflect the strobe very strongly. It is interesting to observe urchins' "arms", among the needles, which it uses to feed itself.

There are loads of crabs everywhere. Quite often you will see pretty big ones, with carapace as big as a medium plate, but the most interesting are spider crabs, with long thin arms, so they look a bit like creatures taken from a sci-fi movie. Unfortunately spider crabs can be seen on the West Coast only, not in Dublin.

I always liked brittlestars. They are from starfish family but they move their arms much faster than starfish, so they can "walk", and will, if you take them on your palm. You have to be a bit lucky to see them here.

Lobsters are very common in Dublin Bay. Sometimes you can meet couple of them during one dive. The biggest are really impressive and old - they can live even fifty years. Hunting lobsters while scuba diving is illegal.

As I said, there are not many fish in the area, but dogfish is very common here. It is a very nice fish, something between half and one meter long. It will often remain motionless allowing you to take closer look or to stroke its tail. They have pretty spots along the slim body. To me, dogfish is a miniaturized replica of tiger shark... :-)

Shrimps were rather rare until August. Now, they are everywhere. They are great target for photography, because of their interesting, complex and delicate bodies. They hide in holes and fissures, which makes photography harder, but if you stay calm, they will come forward - they are quite curious and they can walk on your palm if you are patient enough. The other trick is to take some food with you - I used a mix of boiled egg, tuna fish and fine pieces of... shrimp (a "Tesco one", not their brother). It worked well, but be aware that egg makes considerable backscatter, so be careful with the amount. Anyway, the pictures are a bit weird, because their partial transparency makes the picture as the camera wasn't focused. There is a wall in Sandycove on the corner near James Joyce tower - I found lots of shrimps on that wall in very shallow water.

Here are the practical information on diving in Ireland. First of all, there are two categories: Dublin Bay and the West coast.

The problem with Dublin Bay is that it's pretty sandy, so, depending on the weather, the visibility varies from thirty centimetres to, let's say, ten meters. As I said, marine life is rich, but lacks fish somehow - there are lots of crabs, lobsters, shrimps, starfish etc. Dogfish is quite common here, then couple of other species can be found, but you won't definitely see any schools of fish at all. Bottom composition is interesting as it is rather rocky, but still there is a lot of sand. Seals are common sight here, but you will be lucky if you see them while diving - I haven't so far. During summer, for about two weeks, there were lots of jellyfish in the water, then they died within few days. Porpoises also can be spotted from the boat. Diving season starts in March and ends in October. During winter months visibility is bad and the weather is stormy, so there is no diving. We dive in South of Dublin, near Forty Feet beach in Sandycove or near Dalkey or Muglins island. To dive in Dublin, you have three options - to dive on your own, to join one of several dive clubs or to rent the equipment and pay per dive, but I think this is not too common here. The best is to join a club. I dive with Curragh, and it is very good. The membership costs about 500 Euro a year, then you can join any of the regular dive - there are three dives per week. There are very experienced people in the club and the organization is just perfect - the member do all the work needed to maintain the club plus they teach the stuff for various grades. The club has two boats and most of the time they are used to get to the location, which takes about 10 minutes. The only additional cost is when using the compressor - it takes about 3 Euro to refill the tank. For bank holiday weekends, which is about four times a year, diving trips to the West coast are organized - the club's equipment is towed there. There are moderate currents all the time in Dublin Bay.

West coast, from the Atlantic side, is better, because the visibility is mostly pretty good (rocky bottom without sand), but the weather is pretty unpredictable. It can completely change during a few hours, so every trip is quite a risk. From my experience I can say, that half of the time spent there we couldn't dive because of the conditions. More species can be seen there - big spider crabs, congers, basking sharks sometimes (haven't seen myself).

The water temperature is pretty much the same in Dublin as on the West coast, I would say it is a range between 11-15 degrees, typically 12-14. Dry suit is optimal, but many people in the club use wet suits. What's pretty stupid - life jacket is mandatory on the boats, even for scuba divers. We use SMB for every dive, as the sea traffic can be significant.

In Ireland scuba diving is controlled by CFT. They are affiliated with CMAS, however they make up their additional rules. Check their pages if you are interested in politics.

All the pictures you can find in this article were taken in Dublin Bay, mostly couple of meters from the shore