- Tom Ryan's trip Dives 2017
First dive of 2017, where did the year go? It was a bit choppy today, bit of a breeze and very overcast. Hardly any life about and visibility was about 4m to 6m but murky, lots of particles in the water. My BCD was ever so slightly inflating during the dive so i disconnected the hose and reconnected it, that seemed to do the trick. Also i never put on my ankle weights so my legs were slightly buoyant. I'll have to get my boots resized on my suit this year. I'll probably wait until the diving season is over to change them. At the end of the dive i took off my hood as i was sweating with it on in the "warm" water. Mick, my dive buddy, did the same but somehow managed to loose his mask and snorkel as we relaxed on the surface talking. So no second dive for us today. Next time i'll pack my spare mask!! Nice to be back in the water in Sandycove, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland.
Today's dive was very murky, visibility at only 2m (6foot) max. Lots of small jellyfish about and we were informed by other divers that there were Lions Mane Jellyfish about too but we didn't see any. Hardly any life about other than the jellyfish. As we were diving at low tide we didn't get very deep only 3.6m so in patches it was very hard to stay down, it didn't help that my tank was low on air too so it was slightly adding to my buoyancy. Nice dive though.
The return leg of the previous dive in Sandycove. Visibility still not the best but made for an interesting dive. It makes you focus on the little things that scurry about on the sea bed. Seas were calm and warm with hardly any current. A lovely dive but we'll be aiming to get back out again in a few days time on higher tides.
High tide was at 12:16 so today's dive was perfect. Loads of life at the Outfall, crab, lobster, wrasse, goby and starfish. I love this area for diving, lots of boulders and gullies to swim down into and loads of lobster hiding under rocks and crab hiding in amongst the sea weed. There was a bit of a swell and a light current, the water temperature was lovely at 14 degrees Celsius and the visibility wasn't too bad at about 3-4m. There were plenty of boats in the area especially sail boats from the Dun Laoghaire yacht club, hundreds of them out in the bay. They were well away from us but every now and again lobster boats would pass by checking their pots which were very close to our dive site. All in all a wonderful dive.
High tide was at 12:16 so the return leg of our first dive was perfect. Still loads of life at the Outfall, crab, lobster, wrasse, goby and starfish. There was still a bit of a swell with a light current. The water temperature was 14 degrees Celsius and the visibility was slightly improved at 4m. Again a wonderful dive.
Beautiful morning for a dive, calm seas, visibility up at around 6m, water temperature a lovely 15 degrees Celsius. Plenty of divers about from Oceandivers obviously completing a course as there was a big group of them. Low tide was at 10:06 so we did well to get 5.2 depth. Plenty of life about. Reports of Lions Main last week and swimmers advised not to swim in Sandycove. There were jellyfish about but we didn't spot any Lions Main.
Return leg of our dive across the bay. Tide had turned and was starting to come in. Saw a few jellyfish on our way back in and not much else. Still a nice way to end the two dives and a nice way to start my day before work.
We are participating today in the startup contest Techcrunch Disrupt. Support Diveboard by voting for us!
