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Diver
Down into the Depths of Ireland's Rockbound Coast
By Pól Ó Conghaile
Irish American Post Dublin Bureau
Over Baltimore Harbor, the sun is lobster pink. "Red sky at night, shepherd's
delight," a young man tells a pretty Dutch tourist at the bar. "Red sky
in the morning, sailor takes warning. That's what they say around here.
Can I buy you a drink?"
Outside, shadows pass across cliffs like time over an old man's face;
a toy boat putters back towards the children who have launched it. Baltimore,
Co. Cork, has provided shelter from the Atlantic Ocean since its earliest
beginnings as a pirate settlement. This evening, as the sun dips into a
glassy sheen of surface, is no different.
Beneath this placid sea, however, something unusual is happening.
"Imagine you're upside down with your head in a hole trying to see what
a conger eel is doing," Rianne Smith exhorts, pulling a mask to her face.
"Well we have a toggle on our left hip, so we can dump air by pulling on
that."
At the Aquaventures Dive Centre on Lifeboat Road, we are surrounded
by wetsuits, snorkels and oxygen tanks. Rianne and her husband Jerry, running
the center since they moved here from London in 1996, are in their element.
"Because we're mostly water," Jerry smiles, pointing to a freshly smelted
pile of lead, "we need anything from 18 to 30 pounds to take us down."
Rianne nods, drilling us with the rules, principally: Never Hold Your Breath.
"A lot of people say their only regret is that they didn't discover scuba
diving sooner."
Some didn't have the choice. Since its nervous beginnings in the 1950s,
when hardy souls endeavored to spend short times at shallow depths, recreational
diving has become one of Ireland's fastest growing adventure sports.
Jerry and Rianne put it down to money, a booming adventure holiday industry
and the simple fact that more kids nowadays know how to swim. Today, an
estimated 10,000 certified divers make use of up to 30 diving centers in
Ireland.
"It's lovely to be working in an area you originally considered a hobby;
to be instructing people who actively want to be instructed. Also, this
is the only sport in which you get to use ample quantities of rubber and
baby oil," the Smiths agree.
Diving, according to the introductory video that kicks off our PADI
Discover Scuba Diving Course, offers "a sense of freedom and peace." If
that's so, it is at first glance a massively complicated means to the end.
Technological advances may bode for greater rewards, but they also offer
potential for physiological danger.
The basics are exactly that: Are we able to swim? Yes. Do we suffer
from any listed medical conditions that would endanger us at depth? Yes,
unfortunately. As an asthma sufferer, I have to get a letter faxed from
my doctor, and even then, disappointingly, can only dive to a certain depth.
Not to worry, however, we practice our technique and hand-signals in
the local pool, and repair to Bushe's pub for a hot bowl of soup.
A perfect vantage point from which to monitor the comings and goings
of this tiny port, Bushe's also offers — amidst the nautical pennants and
fish charts on its walls — clues as to the wealth of opportunity beneath
the West Cork waves.
In particular, there hangs a lifebelt recovered from the Kowloon Bridge,
a super bulk tanker that ran aground on the Stagg Rocks in 1986. The sunken
shell, lying between six and 40 meters, is the largest diveable wreck in
Europe and a huge draw for divers.
"The beauty of it is that wrecks, over time, become reefs, and reefs,
over time, attract life," Rianne explains. Divers descending into the Kowloon
Bridge can be rewarded by patrols of plankton feeders, pollack and crayfish.
Rooted to her hull, a forest of dahlia anemones, urchins and starfish evoke
life from dead metal.
As it turns out, there are up to 30 diveable wrecks lying off the coast
of Baltimore, for two simple reasons. Firstly, the straits between Fastnet
and Kinsale are one of Europe's busiest shipping routes, and were ruthlessly
stalked by German U-boats during the Second World War. Secondly, they have
always invited the most inclement of weather.
Hence Carpathia, the steamer that came to the aid of Titanic survivors
in 1912, was torpedoed en route to Boston in 1918, and lies at 150 meters.
The Lusitania lies at 90 meters off the Old Head of Kinsale. Both require
complex mixes of helium, nitrox and oxygen to dive, however, and are as
such off limits to all but the most experienced of divers.
Others are easily accessible. The Alondra, for instance, sunk in 1916,
tips six meters off Kedge Island, and is accessible to experienced novices.
So wherein lies the wrecks' appeal? "It's about seeing things from the
past, visiting things you might never see again," Jerry says. "They're
actively deteriorating."
This eerie wonder, the sense that history is breathing down one's neck,
reaches its apotheosis with U260, a VII C-class German submarine scuttled
in 1945 after striking a mine off Fastnet Rock.
Lying at 46 meters on a rocky bed, U260 is intact save for the bow and
reachable by most experienced divers with training in decompression techniques.
Peering through the lens of an extended periscope, brass gears and prisms
can be observed, as can four torpedo tubes in the bow and the nose of a
torpedo sitting in her racks.
Back on dry land, Rianne dismissed shanty tales of sunken treasure.
Conservation is key, and responsible divers are always mindful of future
generations that may wish to follow their bubbles.
"It's a privilege for us to be down there," she muses; though it must
be said, not everyone can resist the urge to plunder. In particular, Jerry
recalls the time one of U260's guns was discovered in a local field. "That
was either a guilt-ridden diver," he deadpans, "or a particularly strong
storm."
At any rate, spectacular as they no doubt are, these hulking exoskeletons
are but one facet of the West Cork diving experience. "A lot of the guys
want to head straight for the wrecks," as Rianne puts it. "But I prefer
the life."
And what life there is! Dolphins, seals and whales are plentiful in
the summer months; leatherback turtles have been spotted in autumn. Five
miles offshore, changeable currents around the Fastnet Lighthouse encourage
a smorgasbord of activity.
Fish feeding and sleeping in the kelp can make for ghostly memories
on a night dive, too: "I had one experience with a shoal of haddock, moving
away in a carpet-like motion," Rianne remembers. "It felt like something
from The Birds."
Where you choose to dive, of course, depends on the worts of the weather.
Today looks good for the Gaeltacht Island of Cape Clear, where sweet conditions
can toss out up to 20 meters visibility inside the harbor. One of Carbery's
famous Hundred Isles, reached by a kicking and bucking motorboat, this
is bang on the Continental Shelf.
Nor does anything quite prepare you for back-rolling into the Atlantic
Ocean. Kitted out with tanks, fins and Buoyancy Control Devices, we guide
ourselves down the mooring rope, stopping periodically to equalize the
pressure in our ears. Rianne's voice is clear in my mind: Never Hold Your
Breath!
Each dive, you soon learn, creates its own little narrative. Careering
across the sea floor, we accidentally disturb two mating spider crabs;
provoking a grumpy flexing of claws. A dogfish glides beneath us. Starfish
are everywhere; groves of kelp undulate like a gospel choir.
There are sea urchins, anemones and dozens of tiny, flickering fish.
I feel weightless, privy almost to a different taint of consciousness;
time is forgotten, and it seems like only seconds before we are in the
boat once again, drinking from a hot flask of coffee.
Speeding back towards the harbor, I noticed a drop of sunlight twinkling
off Rianne's knife. She explained why such instruments are necessary. Diving
one afternoon off Long Island, in search of a Second World War bomber rumored
to lie there; she caught her leg in an abandoned fishing net.
"You can't panic in those situations. You have to stop, feel for the
net, and cut it. If you keep swimming, or start thrashing about, you get
even more entangled."
A scary thought, and it illustrates a downside to this universe of idylls.
Take a walk along Ownahincha or Long Strand and you'll see the same thing:
bits of nets, floats and junk. Ireland's culture of littering does not
exclude the ocean, and unlikely as an encounter is, one should be careful
to avoid reaping the spoils of this murky debris. That, and draw confidence
from the fact that divers keep coming back.
They do so of course, because off Cape Clear lies the larger island
of Ireland. And this is spring. You expect to look like a gargoyle stumbling
from the water in these temperatures, but not come summer. Those elusive
months are on their way, and with them 18ºC comparative bliss and
15m visibility, extending as far as 30m on occasion at Fastnet Rock. It
takes just five days to become an open water diver, and those in the know
say there's no better place to do it:
"The water is never going to be gin-clear," Rianne says. "But anyone
who learns how to dive here is going to be able to dive almost anywhere
in the world."
 
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