EXPEDITION |
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PHOTO : CW
PHOTO : CK
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Malin Beg Harbour |
Matt Brown on Rathlin O ’ Birne
Crayfish on Enchanted Rocks
Week Two divers in Swimming Pool Bay
PHOTO : OP PHOTO : VINEET BEWTRA
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Sheltered dives
With many of the dives being exposed to south westerlies , we also needed to find some more sheltered dives for when the weather wasn ’ t in our favour . Often these dives can be disappointing , but we found quite the opposite ; if anything there was more life than on the exposed walls . We had lots of crayfish , ling and wrasse . We found mermaid ’ s purses and squid eggs . There were also flat fish , john dory , shoals of juvenile fish , prawns , rays , lobster , crabs , scallops , snakelocks anemones , scorpion fish , blennies , pipe fish , pollock , angler fish and more . All of these dives were fantastic in their own right .
One sheltered area we dived was Swimming Pool Bay , which is protected from most weather except southerlies and has two main areas to dive – rocks on its east and a wall on its west – both descending to 25-30m . Both sides have their own character and both were thronging with life and we were particularly excited to see a john dory here on a couple of dives .
One day when there was a heavy southerly and we were unsure we ’ d be able to get a dive in , Paddy stepped in to tell us that there was a very good dive in Teelin Bay itself . He told us that he ’ d seen divers come out of there with eyes like dinner plates , as they ’ d seen so much life . He certainly knew what he was talking about ! It turned out to be a fantastic dive , especially at about 25m where the sloping boulder wall meets the sandy bottom . It ’ s a large enough area that you can cover different sections of it on different dives – we did just that , and were delighted with it .
The other sheltered area we dived was Malin Beg harbour . We dived a wall on the western approaches , which dropped to 30m . It was a dramatic dive , bursting with life , with large gullies to explore , making it clear that other sites in the harbour would also be well worth checking out . One pair on this dive saw a crayfish so fat that it seemed to have become wedged in its hole !
Conclusions and recommendations
Teelin was a stunning place to dive in every way , and logistically quite straightforward . The diving was on a par with , but subtly different from other Atlantic west-coast options like Cornwall or west Scotland and has great diving in pretty much any weather . With our boat we got about very easily to a wide range of sites . There are also options to pull the boat out and launch closer to other dive spots .
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