May
20
2013
The diversity of marine life has increased dramatically in recent days. With large Ballan Wrasse and large Pollock returning for the summer from the vast depths offshore. Also abundant were shoals of sand eels, jellyfish and Comb Jelly Bolinopsis infundibulum.
Sergio meets a comb jelly
May
17
2013
The Scubadive West 2013 Test Weekend is on 8th & 9th June …. it’s just weeks away! We have a super line up of Scuba Diving Equipment and activities for you to try.
Dive for free in the Sea!
Last year our inaugral SUUNTO Fourth Element Test weekend was a great success with divers travelling from all over the country to try out the great diving gear available. All present enjoyed the shore diving with abundant marine life and great visibility. Many explored the 60 footer wreck, with it’s purpose built, cool Suunto deco station. There were great boat dives on offer all weekend, with reports of great viz, congers and a huge thornback ray sighted at Doonee Beacon, and of course loads of cool Scuba Equipment to try out for free!
Hanging out
There were great giveaways too, with Suunto rucksacks, hats and water bottles for plenty of lucky divers, and a PADI on tour t-shirt and pair of Fourth Element hot foot socks for everybody that attended!
“Abundant marine life on the shore dive”…
John Carlin PADI Regional manager and Sven Kolczak SUUNTO UK, took time out to sample the super diving at Scubadive West’s first SUUNTO Fourth Element test weekend in 2012
For our 2013 Test Event we are proud to announce that we have O’Three Drysuits onboard with us, and we are now Irish Agents for this very popular brand! We have a large stock of the O’Three MSF 500tb flex (5mm neoprene) drysuits in our rental fleet here and O’Three are bringing more of them, plus they are bringing a large stock of the Ri 1-100 and Ri 2-100, (1mm and 2mm neoprene)which will all be available to try out on a dive, for free! You’ll also be able to get measured up for your own drysuit on the day.
Weightless wonderland
We will have the guys from SUUNTO here again with their full line up of wrist mounted dive computers available to try out on a dive. Last year all the models were popular, from the great value ZOOP to the High Spec. Hel O2, with many people buying their own unit over the weekend here.
Soo many to try out!
Hel O2, Vyper Air and Zoop computers
Fourth Element will be here again this year with their Xerotherm and Arctic range of Thermals for you to try out. Also they will have the amazingly flexible Proteus wetsuits, ideal for some snorkelling and ’Free Diving’ with Feargus Callagy from Freedive Ireland , Ireland’s Apnea Academy freediving Instructor, who will be onsite to put you through the paces of some exciting free diving. Why not try out one of the Suunto watch computers in ‘free diving mode’ at the same time!
Analox Ltd is a world leader in the design and manufacture of gas sensors and analysers for all branches of the diving industry from sport to military applications. We are very proud to announce that we are agents for Analox Gas Analysers and they will be attending for the test weekend too! They will have their very popular O2EII Nitrox Analyser and Portable O2 Analyser models available here to try out, they will be giving demonstrations, helping with technical questions and they’ll also have a free competition, so you may be going home with one of these!
Analox O2 EII now in stock here.
Preparing to dive the Wreck ‘Julia T’
Take time out to enjoy some great Scuba diving in an idyllic location with the very best equipment! bring your friends too.. but you’ll need to book in now.
Time out!
call 09543922 or email info@scubadivewest.com to book your place now!
May
17
2013
The Ocean temperature is rising, the visibility is good and the marine life is abundant now!
On recent shore dives our visitors have met face to face with a curious Lumpsucker – Cyclopterus lumpus. These strange looking fish spend most of their time in deep water, but can be seen in the shallows from February to May when pairs meet up to mate.
The female lays her eggs and departs straight away, returning to deep water. The male stays to care for the eggs, anchoring onto to the rock with it’s large sucker. It oxygenates the eggs by swishing its fins over them.
Divers had opportunities to observe and capture images of this most unusual fish.
May
17
2013
Ancient artefacts
Looking forward to our Adventure Day Trip to Caher Island tomorrow!
Places available, call us now. 095 43922
Further information on these trips is available here.
May
7
2013
Try-A- Dive in our safe sheltered cove, in shallow clear Atlantic water. We have the ideal location, top of the range dive equipment for you and the best instructors. It is a great experience, so bring the family!
Quality Time
Discover Scubadiving is our ‘try-a-dive’ programme for complete beginners. We have been operating here from our purpose build waterfront dive centre for 21 years now, and this programme is very popular diring the summer months.
Experience the thrill of breathing underwater, discover the beautiful untouched environment just beneath the surface and give your teenagers something to smile about!
Pristine environment
Apr
28
2013
Photo by Sarah Tallon
We are completing a major upgrade of our website scubadivewest.com this week.
Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
We are bringing you a completely re-designed interface, with an intuitive tile format. The new webpages will re-size and re format to to suit the device you are using. So you’ll be able to enjoy all the content from your favourite website whether you are on your pc, laptop, tablet, iphone or android phone! Please bear with us over the next few days. Call or email us if you can’t find what you are looking for on the website.
Good Diving, from the team at Scubadive West.
Apr
2
2013
Our egg hunt/ egg idfentification quiz published here on 29th March had plenty of people scratching their heads!
How did you do?
1. Whelk eggs. The marine gastropod Dog Whelk is a large sea snail and a common sighting here, but their egg clusters are only found in early Spring. You may also find clusters of the empty shell cases washed up on the shore at this time of year.
2. Mermaids Purse. This translucent, plastic like purse encaplulates a Lesser sportted Dogfish. Also visible at this time of year, usually attached to kelp stalks.
3. Nudibranch egg Rosette. The Nidibranch Polycera quadrilineata visible in this beautiful photo by Maja Stankowski alongside some of their distinctive white egg ribbons.
4. Nudibranch eggs circles. Photo taken at the shore here, lots of these small circles on the eel grass.
5. Skate egg case.
6. A’basket’ of Squid eggs. Each of the tubes is called a candle.
7. Octopus eggs clusters.
Apr
1
2013
We hope you had a Happy Easter wherever you were over the holiday weekend.
At Scubadive West our visitors enjoyed superb diving conditions and blue skies in a cold Easterly wind.
Our first PADI Open Water Diver Course of 2013 got underway on Saturday morning with a brief orientation, module 1 classroom session and then straight into the our sheltered private cove for their first confined water scuba session.
The incredibly clear ocean combined with sunshine and a golden sandy seabed provided the ideal learning environment for these aquatic apprentices, all the while under the supervision of our Instructors Cillian and Colin, and our Divemaster trainees Martin and Sean.
For the more experienced divers we had a busy schedule of boat dives, exploring some great dive sites including Thany Beg, Leacog Preacan, Doonee Beacon and the shipwreck ‘Julia T’.
Exploring the Julia T
With underwater visibility of 15 to 20 metres on the boat dives it was crystal clear that the West was the place to be over the weekend.
Welcome all
Whether recently qualified or the most experienced of divers we had something for everyone. Qualified but less experienced divers paired up and enjoyed our sheltered shore dive and explored the ’60 footer’ wreck, or took a guided boat dive with one of our Divemasters. Experienced deep divers explored the wall dives and wrecks. The photograpers were happy too, with great natural light under water there were opportunities to stalk the shoaling pollock and Bib hoping to capture them on film,…. well, capture them on memory card really!
One of many great photos by Sarah Tallon
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How did you get on with our (Marine) Egg Hunt?
Have a look at the egg photos in our blog post from 26th March.
We will publish the answers tomorrow!
Mar
26
2013
Well it is Easter!.. so can you identify these eggs from the photos?
no. 1 ?
No. 2 ?
No. 3 ? by Maja Stankovski
No.4 ? by Cillian Gray
No. 5 ? by BMLSS
No. 6 ? by BMLSS
No. 7 ?
As always, remember to take only photos and leave only memories, also don’t disturb or even touch these creatures at the most delicate early moments of thier life, and have a Happy Easter!