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Coastal Development in Ireland
Influencer and hiking enthusiast Roz Purcell (centre) is supporting this year’s Love This Place campaign by Leave No Trace Ireland
Leave No Trace Ireland — Ireland’s only outdoor ethics programme, which promotes the responsible use of the outdoors — has launched its fourth national awareness campaign urging the public to enjoy our inland waterways, coastal areas, beaches and other outdoor spaces…
A photo by Dr. Kevin Lynch, University of Galway, showing examples of fencing installed recently in Murvey, Co. Galway
Galway’s Grattan Beach is to become a “living lab” for the city this month, as part of a pilot project. Sand fencing is to be installed during the month of June as part of research on “nature-based solutions” for managing…
File image of the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast
Judgment has been reserved in the judicial review into the granting of a marine licence for the excavation of gas storage caverns under Larne Lough. After four days of submissions at Belfast High Court, on Friday (5 May) Justice Michael…
Larne Lough in Co Antrim
Some 30 swimmers took to the waters of Larne Lough on Saturday (22 April) in protest over plans to store half a billion cubic metres of natural gas under its bed, according to BBC News. As previously reported on Afloat.ie,…
ORCA Ireland logo
The Ocean Research Conservation Association of Ireland (ORCA Ireland) intends to deploy a data buoy as an aid to navigation off the South Coast of Ireland this weekend. The deployment will take place on Saturday 22 April, subject to weather…
1 in 5 people flush damaging items down the toilet
An Taisce’s Clean Coasts programme and Uisce Éireann have launched their Think Before You Flush campaign for 2023, reminding people to the mindful of what we should and should’t put down our toilets. In Cork city last week, as the…
Kinsale Energy logo
PSE Kinsale Energy Limited is undertaking an inshore pipeline survey along the route of a decommissioned pipeline from the Kinsale Gas Field. Works will focus on the pipeline in the Celtic Sea close to Inch Beach in Co Cork. The…
RNLI lifeguards on a beach
Lifeguards from the RNLI return to beaches in Northern Ireland this week as the charity, Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council and National Trust prepare and get ready for another busy season. From this Good Friday (7 April) through to…
The Angelshark is now a critically endangered species in Irish waters
“Jaws” it ain’t – the Angelshark has more in common with the skate and ray but is now an endangered species. The squat flat shark, appropriately named Squatina squatina, once lived in abundance on sandy and muddy seabed areas on…
Waterford City & County Council logo
Waterford’s local authority has removed a long-abandoned trawler that had become a magnet for fly-tipping and vermin at a scenic pier, as the Irish Examiner reports. The fishing vessel was once part of a fleet of ‘50-footers’ promoted by Bord…
Coastal farmers and landowners, trail management committees, community groups and local authorities will be eligible to apply for grants under the scheme, which aims to increase outdoor trails from 80 to 150 over the next two years
Coastal walks could become national trails under a €2.4 million scheme to develop 70 new walking trails across the country. Coastal farmers and landowners, trail management committees, community groups and local authorities will be eligible to apply for grants under…
The new Ros an Mhíl development will be accessible to large vessels such as Naval Service vessels, Marine Institute research vessels, marine survey vessels and marine leisure craft
On Friday (24 February) Marine Minster Charlie McConalogue visited the site of the new deep-water quay development under construction at the State-owned Fishery Harbour Centre in Ros an Mhíl, Co Galway. As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the new development will…
Ghostship: MV Alta was washed near Ballycotton, east Cork after Storm Dennis struck Ireland in February 2020. Since the incident, sea and weather has led the ship to breaking up with the aft section above on the rocky coast.
A ghost ship which washed ashore in Irish waters three years ago, which led to a report as to what to do with the abandoned 80m freight vessel on the east Cork coast, has still not been completed. In the…
Croagh Patrick rises serenely above Clew Bay, an unrivalled mingling of sea and land which is developing its own maritime culture of inter-mixed eco-friendly industry and recreation afloat
Clew Bay on the Mayo coast is in a league of its own. Outstandingly beautiful, with the serene peak of Croagh Patrick rising above Ireland’s most intricate and dynamic inter-mingling of sea and islands through many inlets large and small,…
Coastwatch co-ordinator Karin Dubsky
Restoration is the theme of a Coastwatch event to mark UN World Wetlands Day today in Co Wexford. The one-day event will include a keynote address by Tobias Salathe of the Ramsar Convention European office in Geneva, Switzerland. Ireland currently…
Launching Ireland's first (Mission Blue) Hope Spot was Aoife O' Mahony, Campaign Manager for Fair Seas, and Lucy Hunt (right), Founder of SeaSynergy, at Waterville, Co. Kerry
A large stretch of ocean off the south west coast of Ireland has been added to a list of ‘Hope Spots’ by a global marine conservation movement. Mission Blue is led by legendary oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle and now has…

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.