Diving in Dingle / Ireland

[Tank]

Dive Dingle.
Not a truer word can be said...

I was inspired from talking to other diving friends about just getting out and away for a weekend of diving over on the west coast of Ireland. I live in Dublin and regularly dive here in the irish sea. Conditions are not exactly the best for diving, but we have a few good dive sites. On the west coast of Ireland there is the atlantic currents which brings along all sorts of interesting marine life. The visibility also tends to be much better. Its a bit of a drive across country but I thought, just do it.



I came accross a dive centre on the internet called Dingle Marina dive centre. These guys are based in Dingle harbour and do regular dives to the Blasket islands. It seemed like a good setup and after a few emails to and fro, I was on my way for a weekend of diving to the west of Ireland.
Here, if you mention Dingle, there is a strong chance the name “Fungie” will come into the conversation. He is a bottlenose dolphin who has made Dingle harbour his home since 1983. When I was away on a liveaboard in the red sea/Egypt, Germans on the boat said to me. “You have a dolphin named Fungie in Ireland”. There was no escaping it. The real pull for me to do this short weekend trip was the possibility of seeing basking sharks. These elusive sharks have been widely seen on the west of Ireland in the summer months. This is as good a place as any to see these plankton feeding sharks.



Dingle is a very touristy town. Not neserraly a bad thing, as there are lots of pubs, restraunts and other amenitys at hand. It is also a fishing village, so plenty of people going about their day to day business. The weekend I arrived, the sun was shining in all its glory. A perfect weekend for diving. The weather can change everything, from awesome visibility underwater to people feeling good and relaxed on the surface. The diving was not until a lazy 1pm, so I had plenty of time to have a look around the town and visit the Dingle Dive Marina Centre. Jacqui Cozens is the owner and runs the shop. Jacquie has had articles published in popular dive magazines and is very much into the protection of our marine enviornment.
The boat journey was 45 minutes to the blasket islands and to a wreck dive site called the three brothers. It wasnt until a late 3:50pm by the time we were backing into the water for our first dive. It was a trawler which hit the blaskets and sunk. They tried to salvage it but the weather didnt allow. Im not very much into wreck diving but it did host enough marine life to make the dive interesting throughout. The trawler was mostly intact and lay at about 29 meters, with lots of plumose anenomes on the mast, nudibrancs around the deck and crayfish on the sea bed, there was plenty to observe.



Time was against us after the first dive so we did the second dive as we made our way back towards the harbour. It was a senic dive and most relaxing. We dropped into 25 meters and made our way towards the coastline with our average depth being 15 meters. There were lots of marine life to see, like lobster, pollock, spider crabs, scorpion fish, a couple of tompot blennys, jellyfish in the sunrays and just a nice dive overall.


One thing dive companys need to spell out to there customers just before they dive is: “Dont interfere with any marine life while scubadiving. Its not good for anyone”. When I dive, I feel privilaged to be in that enviornment. A beauty, that for most people, will never get to see. One of the other divers on the boat obviously had other ideas of scubadiving. There is always one though! I saw this diver, turning starfish upside down, swinging at fish that were feeding, grabbing a tentical of a crawfish and kicking up everything the diver finned by. Least to say it dissapointed me very much. I had to stop taking photographs and clean up his mess. The diver basically had no regard for anything but themself. It really gets on my nerves to see this, which thankfully is not very often at all. When I mentioned to that person on the boat, about not touching crayfish antennas they seemed suprised. The divers ignorance knew no better.



That evening I made my way down to the town to sample one of the many fish restraunts. I would recommend you do a bit of looking around first, to see which restraunt looks clean. I basically went into the first one I saw. That was probably a bad idea but the hunger was calling. I ordered prawns and haddock from the small menu list. It turned out there was no prawns left so I went with the soup of the day. The soup tasted like it was on the pot for the whole day. The chewy haddock was full of batter and dripping with grease. It was not cheap either. All done with the food I made my way to the Dingle Pub. There are supposed to be over 50 pubs in dingle... Not feeling too good, I managed only 1 guinness, then had to leave, as my stomach could not handle anything else. So an early night for me and just as well as the next day was going to be a long day.


Diving was for 9:30am so up at 8:30 breakfast, shower and check-out of B&B, which I have to say was a very plesant stay in the Dingle Harbour Lodge and very close to the dive centre. Air conditioning in the rooms would have been a plus but the windows open sufficed, although you could hear everyone walking back into the lodge, coming from the pubs.


About 10:20am we eventually got going. We had the resident dolphin, Fungie, to see us off from the harbour. We were off to the blasket islands again. As there was only 5 divers on the boat and they only go to the blaskets with 6 or more, we all had to chip in an extra €20 each! On the first dive, we had similar diving as to the day before, from the marine life to the topology. For the second dive, Jacquie asked what type of diving we would like to do, which is probably one of the best things, I think, you can ask a diving customer. There was no sign of basking sharks this weekend so a trip to see the seals would be pretty good in my books. So the second dive was to be with seals. Jacquie had time for everybody on the boat, with her friendly smile and good conversation she is an interesting person to chat with. The seal dive was such a shallow dive, at 5 meters max it barely registered a dive on my computer. Seals are very curious creatures. Looking at them glide effortlessy in the water, it is us that are the lame ones and cant move away quickly if need be. We all lay in await for seals to take an interest in us. Irionically my neck seal of my drysuit was leaking in water at an uncomfortable rate. Not many seals showed up while underwater. There were a couple who took a little interest. I was only 30 minutes into the 5 meter dive and I just had to get out because of the leak in my suit. Soaked to the skin we made our way back to dingle harbour. We had dolphins right beside our boat for a couple of minutes, as we made our way back.



It was a semi unplanned trip to the west for some diving. I booked the b&b and the diving on the day I was driving down. There are lots of B&Bs in dingle and when I was there, nearly everywhere I saw had vacancies. I would think that on a bank holiday weekend it would get pretty busy. The road journey from Dublin is 345 km (214 miles). It took about 5 hours driving. Dingle is not cheap, from eating out to diving, expect to pay full rate. If you have your own tanks bring them, as its normal to do the two boat dives on the one trip with two tanks.
I hope to dive more in Dingle as I know it has a lot more varied diving sites to offer. The pubs being the main attraction for divers of course. Then theres the dolphins, whales, sharks, wrecks and not forgetting the seals all to be seen. One of the other divers on the boat had dived with Dingle dive centre before and on a previous dive to a site called “fungies bedroom” he described it enthuastically as “A colour Explosion”.....



Good Diving
All Photos from Dingle

www.scubabreaks.com
www.divedingle.com


(c) www.scubabreaks.com

[TimIngmire]

Hey Derek,

Excellent report!

One of the things I regret never getting around to doing in Ireland is a dive trip down to Dingle. I had heard many good things about the place and, with your report and photos, I could kick myself for never having made the time. I'll have to try and get back over next year when for a short break.

[Norseman]

Indeed, a brilliant report. Thanks for the effort.

I want to go to Ireland!
Now how to fit that in... hmmm...

K