Diving

Diving - Gallery images

Athlone Sub Aqua Club is one of the most active diving clubs in the country. Open water diving outings are organised by the club's Diving Officer for every weekend throughout the period May to October. Details of these outings are outlined in the club's Dive Programme. These dive outings involve the club travelling to a wide variety of locations on all Irish Coasts. A favourite destination for the club is Kilkee, County Clare. Other locations regularly visited by the club include Kilmore Quay, County Wexford; Balitimore, County Cork; Dingle and Ballinskelligs, County Kerry; Aran Islands; Achill; Inis Turk; Inis Boffin; Ballycastle and Killary, Co Mayo; Mullaghmore, County Sligo and St. Johns Point, Teelin and Malin Head in County Donegal. This open water activity allows members to carry out a variety of dives including training dives, scenic dives, drift dives, night dives and wreck dives.  These dives present members with an opportunity to experience the wide variety of marine life that Irish coastal waters have to offer. Divers can expect to see anemone, sponges, dead man fingers, starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumber, pollack, wrasse, flatfish, dog fish, crabs lobster and congor eels on almost every dive. Rarer but more exciting encounters include sightings of seals, sunfish, octopus, dolphins and whales. In addition to diving off the Irish coast the club also organises diving locally every Wednesday evening in the River Shannon in Athlone.

 

Members of the club do not however confine their diving trips to Irish waters. In recent years members of the club have visited the Isle of Man, Stoney Cove in England and the ship wrecks of Oban and Scapa Flow in Scotland. Scapa Flow in particular has attracted divers from Athlone Sub Aqua Club on a number of occasions as it is home to the scuttled German High Sea Fleet of the First World War. More exotic dive locations have also been undertaken by club members to a number of foreign destinations including El Hierro, the Red Sea, the Great Barrier Reef, Thailand, Maldives and South Africa.

 

Dive programme

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