‘Nigel Motyer has been Ireland’s leading diving photographer for four decades, and his work is celebrated globally. Talent and time are combined in these inspirational pages to showcase Irish waters like never before, through diverse, colourful and simply stunning imagery. A landmark book.’
Dr Alex Mustard MBE, marine ecologist and President of the British Society of Underwater Photographers
‘Breathtaking scenes from stunning, undersea realms in Ireland! Reading Beneath Irish Seas is like swimming through a fairytale, where exotic seascapes are filled with a dizzying array of enchanting characters. With his poetic, photographic eye, Nigel Motyer uses colour, light, gesture and grace to create the most compelling scenes – each frame a masterpiece!’
Brian Skerry, photojournalist and filmmaker
Award-winning photographer Nigel Motyer has been diving and photographing Irish seas since the 1980s and has a remarkable portfolio of Irish underwater imagery. His photography has featured in many publications worldwide, including National Geographic
Beneath Irish Seas
The Hidden Wonders of Ireland’s
Amazing Marine Life
NIGEL MOTYER
For Sinead, Hannah and Ben, thank you for allowing me time in the ocean.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
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Printed in Dubai.
Merrion Press is a member of Publishing Ireland.
Introduction
For nearly forty years, I’ve lived and scuba dived in Ireland, but when I tell people this, the reaction is often the same: they ask why. The perception is that the seas around Ireland are cold, grey and uninviting. But for those of us lucky enough to explore a world that few ever see, what we find just below the surface of our coastal waters is a thriving ecosystem of surprising colour, rich diversity and quiet beauty.
My fascination with the underwater world began in childhood. I can still remember the first time I waded into the sea with a borrowed mask, peering into the shallows. Those early glimpses lit a fire in me – a need to understand and explore. Over time, diving became more than a hobby; some might even call it an obsession. Not long ago, for example, I travelled to southern Australia purely to photograph a small, elusive fish that lives in a handful of bays along that coast. Is that normal? I don’t know, but it’s been a journey I’ve loved.
My interest in underwater photography began early in my diving life, when someone lent me a camera to try. This small act of generosity sparked a passion that has brought me immense joy ever since. It has also brought its fair share of challenges. There is an old saying: underwater photography would be easy if it weren’t for the water. Each dive presents endless obstacles: the cold, the need for specialised gear, and the relentless battle to keep the cameras dry and functioning. The water saps light, softens contrast and always seems to conspire against clear images. It can be frustrating beyond words, but it’s also endlessly absorbing, and I’ve spent decades striving to improve – always learning, always trying to capture something new.
Beneath Irish Seas is my first attempt to showcase images I have taken around the coast of Ireland. While each photograph in the book was made in a fraction of a second, this collection has been years in the making. Curating these images has brought me a fresh sense of joy – transforming fleeting underwater moments into something lasting, something I can share with others.
Pictures have power. They allow us to see, and we tend to find it easier to value what we can see. My hope is that by revealing this hidden world, Beneath Irish Seas might help foster a deeper appreciation for the fragile environments and marine life that exist just off our coast. Perhaps, in some small way, it might inspire the same wonder I felt as a child and, in doing so, help create advocates and foster a desire to protect and to care for this precious environment, so that the next generation of explorers, photographers and researchers will continue to give that cause a voice in the years ahead.
Ireland is where I first learned to dive and, to this day, it remains my favourite place in the world to be under water. I hope that, through these photographs, you’ll begin to understand why. I also hope it challenges your expectations of what lies beneath Irish seas.
What Drives Life Beneath Irish Seas?
Sunlight fuels most of the life in Ireland’s shallow temperate coastal waters. As winter gives way to spring and the days grow longer, the warming water triggers an explosion of plankton along our shores. The sea turns a vivid green, sometimes so thick with microscopic plant and animal life that visibility shrinks to just a few metres.
However, it’s not just the plankton that affects what we see under water – the water itself is remarkably good at absorbing light. The deeper you go, the dimmer it becomes, and soon the vibrant marine plants and algae that thrive in well-lit shallows begin to disappear. In their place, deeper down, the rocky reefs are taken over by dense communities of colourful invertebrates and animals that coat every surface. It’s these invertebrate communities – anemones, sponges, corals – that bring such vivid colour to the reefs. As the water absorbs the colour, much of this brilliance is hidden from view without artificial light. So divers use powerful torches to illuminate the reef and I use underwater flash units in my photography to reveal the colours.
It can be hard to imagine the incredible complexity and colour that lies just beneath the surface of Ireland’s coastal waters – the astonishing variety of life that calls these reefs home. In the following pages, I’ve divided the coast into four sections and focused on the areas where the marine life is particularly lush, vibrant and interesting; areas of the seabed that are featureless or largely sandy have not been included. My hope is that this collection of images will vividly illustrate the diversity and beauty of the marine life waiting to be discovered just off some of Ireland’s most familiar stretches of coastline.
A Mola mola or sunfish with a pilot fish fellow traveller. More common in warmer waters, pilot fish are not recorded very often around Ireland’s shores, but they do come from time to time. Mola mola are more common, one of the biggest bony fish species anywhere in the world, and, surprisingly, they achieve this size on a diet of mostly jellyfish. This one was off Loop Head in County Clare.
Heading north from the Shannon Estuary to the dramatic cliffs of Loop Head in County Clare, then up the Galway, Mayo and Sligo shores into the sweeping expanse of Donegal Bay, Ireland’s western seaboard offers a rich tapestry of coastal features and marine life. From the heights of Loop Head, visitors can often spot basking sharks gliding close to shore during the summer months, a remarkable sight in these nutrient-rich Atlantic waters. In Connemara, shallow, sandy bays, such as Kilkieran Bay, form tranquil inlets that contrast with the exposed ocean beyond. The Salt Lake, just south of the town of Clifden, is essentially a huge rock pool covering many acres, which fills and empties at high and low tides. These protected waters are unique marine habitats for important plant species, such as eelgrass, which provide vital habitats for some juvenile fish species. Frequently rays and some of Ireland’s smaller shark species come into these shallow bays to lay their eggs. The still waters form deep sediment layers that support delicate marine ecosystems where unique species
live, including Norwegian lobsters and fireworks anemones. Farther north, Killary Harbour, Ireland’s only fjord, presents a stunning, glacially carved inlet flanked by steep mountains.
The Sligo and Mayo coastlines, among the nearest points to the edge of the Irish continental shelf, experience unique oceanographic conditions. Occasionally, cooler, clear oceanic waters rise up from the shelf and wash up against the coast, which brings extraordinary underwater visibility that can reach up to 40 metres.
Offshore, island communities have long been a cornerstone of life along this coast. The Aran Islands, Inishbofin and Inishturk continue to uphold a rich maritime heritage, in contrast to the now-abandoned Inishkea Islands off Mayo. In the early twentieth century, a Norwegian whaling station on nearby Rusheen Island provided employment to locals. Today, whaling has long ceased and the islands are a sanctuary for wildlife, hosting around a third of Ireland’s Atlantic grey seal population. Ireland officially banned whaling in 1937, and in 1991 declared its waters a whale and dolphin sanctuary, a striking transformation that highlights both environmental recovery and the evolving relationship between people and the sea.
Retracted jewel anemones cover a rock on the seabed at Blacksod Bay, County Mayo.
County Clare
Dusty, a bottlenose dolphin, has been living a mostly solitary life off the Clare coast since 2000. She’s called after the singer Dusty Springfield, who lived in the area and had her ashes scattered off the Cliffs of Moher when she died. Shortly afterwards, this dolphin moved into the area and has lived there ever since. People do swim with her, but while she is often friendly to humans, she is very big and can sometimes be aggressive – this is a wild animal after all.
Humpback whales lunge feeding off the Cliffs of Moher. One of the great success stories of animal conservation, humpback whale numbers have rebounded globally since public opinion forced a ban on whaling. The whales are migratory, but many of the same animals return to Irish waters each year. Late spring to the end of the year is the best time to see them.
Two divers prepare to dive in the Pollock Holes in Kilkee. These large tide pools are flooded twice a day but are sheltered from the wild Atlantic just metres away, so smaller, more delicate species thrive here. They are fun to explore, but you need to be careful as the tide comes in quickly.
Jewel anemones grow in amongst the sponges on holdfasts of kelp. These plants can withstand extraordinary wave action and not get washed away.
A compass jellyfish in Kilkee with a small school of juvenile scad hiding in its mantle. In this way, these tiny fish are protected from predators keen to avoid the stings of the jellyfish, to which the scad are immune. What I love about this image is that very few people notice the basking shark in the background.
Kelp starting to regrow in early-season shallow rock pools at Kilkee.
Basking Shark Aggregations in County Clare
It sometimes seems there aren’t many good-news headlines in marine conservation these days, but one story that lifts the spirit is the resurgence of the basking shark in Irish waters.
When I started diving in the 1980s, a basking shark sighting was a very rare event. Ireland banned the hunting of these animals only in 1984, and the population had been in serious decline for decades. They were hunted for their oil, which at one point was used to keep the streetlamps of London lit. Since the cessation of hunting, the number of sightings has steadily increased, and it is hoped we are now seeing a real recovery of this extraordinary creature.
The basking shark is the second biggest fish in the sea, second only to the tropical whale shark, with some of the bigger sharks
sighted around Ireland’s coast recorded at over 9 metres in length. They start showing up in Irish coastal waters in early April as the plankton bloom begins. Groups of feeding sharks can be seen with flared mouths wide open, filtering huge amounts of plankton.
Most early summer observations of basking sharks are of feeding close to the surface. However, in recent years, in late August and early September a different behaviour has been seen. With fewer sightings in Scotland and Donegal, the sharks seem to move a little farther south, and large numbers have been sighted gathering off the County Clare coast, at Loop Head and as far north as the Aran Islands.
I first photographed these aggregations back in August 2016, just southwest of the Aran Islands, with my dive buddy Nick Pfieffer when we were out looking for blue sharks. Since then, we have seen this behaviour more frequently, with the number of sharks sighted growing every year. Little is really known about what is going on in these aggregations, but photographic records and observations are adding significantly to the knowledge being built up. The suggestion is that this behaviour may be a mating socialisation.
Once the sharks start gathering, smaller groups of up to thirty line up nose to tail, forming a circular spiral known as a torus. These groups are usually made up of large sharks, so probably sexually mature groups, strengthening the theory that this is mating behaviour. Female sharks often appear paler in colour and some show signs of abrasion on their pectoral fins, possibly indicators of mating – the males of other shark species bite down on the females’ pectoral fins during mating, although, to the best of my knowledge, actual basking shark mating hasn’t yet been observed.
Perhaps the most spectacular behaviour we see in these aggregations is the sharks jumping out of the water. This is the easiest way to find them, as a 10-metre, 5-metric-tonne animal makes a hell of splash when it lands back in the water. Again, nobody is really sure why they do this: it could be a show of strength or dominance, but other possible reasons vary from signalling to others, via the sound made when crashing back into the water, that they want to gather, to simply shaking off the parasitic lampreys that attach themselves to these sharks.
Whatever is going on, one thing is certain: despite this being one of the animal kingdom’s biggest species, it is still a very secretive animal, and the ocean gives up its secrets very sparingly.
It should be noted that, in October 2022, basking sharks were given protected status under Section 23 of Ireland’s 1976 Wildlife Act, and a new code of conduct was published about how these animals should be approached, which includes the stricture that anyone entering the water should now stay at least 4 metres away from them.
Very few of the basking sharks in these aggregations show any signs of feeding, although some do swim with their mouths open for short periods.
Some of the female sharks show a paler body coloration during these aggregations.
Many basking sharks have lampreys attached to them. The lamprey, an ancient parasitic fish, uses powerful suction and a ring of sharp teeth to dig into the flesh of a basking shark and feed off its blood. Many of the sharks show scars from previous lamprey bites.
The aggregations often form circular toruses where the sharks spiral nose to tale in groups of up to thirty or so.
These sharks were listed as endangered in 2019 and given protected status in 2022 through their inclusion in the 1976 Wildlife Act, with a new code of conduct published on how people should safely interact with these amazing animals. The images here were taken in 2021 while both free and scuba diving. Our experience was that the sharks alternated between complete ambivalence to curiosity about humans, and they would often swim to us in the water or follow us as we swam back to the boat.
Although most of the observations of this behaviour have understandably been at the surface, we now know that the sharks also gather in big groups on the seabed. Here a large group of sharks is seen at a depth of 30 metres.
New Quay, County Galway
New Quay, tucked away in the southern corner of Galway Bay, has a fascinating origin linked to a dramatic natural event. Historical accounts suggest that the area’s present form was shaped, at least in part, by the effects of a tsunami that struck the west coast of Ireland in 1755. This tsunami, triggered by the massive Lisbon earthquake, sent waves across the Atlantic that reached as far as Ireland with such energy that it dramatically altered parts of the coastline. In New Quay the force of the waves is believed to have scoured out sections of the shore and reconfigured the landscape, creating a new island – Aughinish – and the sheltered anchorage that gave the area its name.
Under water today you can clearly see the stepped limestone seabed shaping the marine habitat, as the northern shores of the Burren run into southern shores of Galway Bay. This provides a rich, pitted, rocky habitat washed twice a day by incoming and outgoing tides, which are particularly strong as they are funnelled through the narrow channel between the mainland and Aughinish Island. Diving here can be difficult and has to be timed for the slack water between the turn of the tides, but once under water you quickly see the impact of this plankton-rich flow, which supports a huge variety of beautifully colourful marine species.
common prawn,
species of
A
a
crustacean, on a dead man’s finger coral in New Quay.
A velvet swimming crab on a kelp stalk. These crabs get their name from the short hairs that cover their body, which are soft to the touch, and their modified paddleshaped hind legs, which make them very effective swimmers.
Above and overleaf: Close-ups of jewel anemones in New Quay. Named for the vibrant colours at the tips of their tentacles, these are, in fact, little packets of stinging cells used to paralyse passing plankton. These anemones come in a range of colours and usually colonise the surfaces of high-energy sites with wave action or strong tides.
Above: A juvenile ballan wrasse, the largest of the wrasse species. Adults can reach up to 60 centimetres in length.
Left: A close-up of a velvet swimming crab, with its distinctive red eyes.
A small decorator crab plants sponge on its shell to blend into its environment. This crab gets its name from the fact that it ‘decorates’ its carapace with algae, sponges, coral and even small animals for camouflage.
