On the chart the east end of Tearaght Island looked like a plateau at 15 to 20 metres, but we had descended the wall to 30 metres and it was still going down. It eventually fizzled out to a boulder slope at 35 metres.There aren't many dive sites more remote than Tearaght Island, a jagged rock sticking 200 metres out of the Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland.
On the chart the east end of Tearaght Island looked like a plateau at 15 to 20 metres, but we had descended the wall to 30 metres and it was still going down. It eventually fizzled out to a boulder slope at 35 metres.
We looped out across the slope and poked around under a few boulders. Air getting low and dive computers getting full, we ascended the wall past densely packed carpets of "squidge" until it became apparent that something was wrong - nothing serious, but wrong all the same. The wall ended 10 metres short of the surface!
That's the trouble with charts. In places as remote as this you have to look carefully at the survey dates. In this case the survey was dated 1857, and some guy with a rowing boat and a lead line had probably dropped it a few times on top of pinnacles like the one we had ascended and marked the area as flat. Maybe he had been sampling the Guinness. Never mind, time to deploy the delayed SMB and make a safety stop.
The west coast of Ireland is not an area famous for shipwrecks, but on the south side of Great Blasket Island, just a few hundred metres back from the headland, is the wreck of the steel hulled trawler "Three Brothers". As with most wrecks round Ireland, the rumours relating to its sinking include drunk at the wheel and an insurance job.
Although only wrecked in 1990, the Three Brothers is already plastered in marine life, from the railings above the covered bow to the "A" frame at the stern. Its not the sort of wreck that brass souvenir hunters would appreciate, but if you are into poking around in holes or admiring an almost intact ship with colourful life and shoals of fish in clear water, the Three Brothers is well worth a visit.
At the north end of Inishtooskert we again descended a steep slope to a boulder-strewn seabed at 35 metres. Rounding a corner a small gully leading back into the rock caught my eye. I ventured inside and in no time at all it developed into a 30 metre deep chasm with a real whoosh of a surge from the waves above.
Venturing further and deeper into the cliff face, sides covered in jewel anemones gave way to densely packed strawberry tunicates and sponges. Even the crawfish couldn't hang on to the walls in this surge. My ears were bombarded by "ba-boom" compressions as the surge hit the back of the gully and compressed an air space at the end. Diving inside a natural pneumatic drill, it was easy to appreciate how such a slot had been cut.