Another Busy Weekend’s Diving

The first dive of the weekend involved a trip to a local quarry for a training dive. This is never a particularly exciting location but it is is useful to fit in a quick evening dive during the week. I went in with a trainee and we did a circuit of the shallow end for a max depth of around 10m. We saw a couple of small fish in the shallows but as usual there was not a lot else to see.

Sunday ended up being a bit more interesting. We decided to head off to north County Mayo and dive out of Kilcummin harbour. It wasn’t looking particularly promising when we got there with a stiff southerly breeze making the harbour quite choppy but we knew it would be sheltered around the headland. The chop in the harbour made launching the boat and loading it somewhat complicated but we got ourselves sorted in the end.

Our first dive was around the headland in Lacken bay and it was well sheltered as promised. We descended a shot line onto a boulder bottom and it was quite a magical experience. Loads of cup corals, jewel anenome and sponges and a lot of small fish life with wrasse and the occasional large pollock. This was yet another dive with a trainee so we were limited to around 14m for 30 minutes. I shot off an SMB at the end of the dive and we ascended that dive.

The second dive was around the corner from here but slightly closer to the head where we dropped into a gully with a rocky reef descending from around 8m to 14m. The life on the dive was similar but the rock formations were just amazing. The reef started to come a bit shallow later in the dive so we veered off into a gully between some boulders and followed this until it petered out into kelp. It being early in the year, the kelp was quite interesting to bimble around in and we came across a sleeping dogfish. After about 25 minutes, I shot off the SMB and we finished up at 31 minutes. This was an outstanding dive and my buddy and I were both grinning from ear to ear.

The boat recovery was a bit hairy as the wind blowing into the harbour had picked up a bit but we managed to get out handily enough. We pulled out around 5PM and stopped for a good meal of monkfish, prawns and muscles in Ballina.