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Coastal Development in Ireland
Sailing the world with a piano on board. French woman, Marieke Huysmans Berthou performs open air concerts from the deck of her boat wherever she docks. Berthou had a captivated quayside audience in Dingle at the weekend.
On the high seas a musical odyssey, RTE reports, took place on board a 12-metre sailboat, featuring a piano and a French singer songwriter. Marieke Huysmans Berthou had a dream to sail around the world and perform concerts wherever she…
The works are being carried out by the utility vessel Roxane Z
Planned works on the Portrane Pre-Lay Shore End installation for the Rockabill Subsea Cable are being carried out from the coast of Portrane, Co Dublin. Scheduled to start yesterday. Monday 1 July, they will continue to next Wednesday 10 July.…
The Empress of Britain as seen in 1931. Nine years later it was bombed and torpedoed by the Nazis off Donegal
“Substantial progress” is being made in the recovery of gold bullion from a ship wrecked off Donegal nearly 80 years ago, as RTÉ News reports. Atlantic Subsea Ventures is involved in the salvage operation at the Empress of Britain, a luxury…
Rathmullan Marina in Co Donegal has been awarded its first ever Blue Flag for superior water quality
Three beaches in the North West have lost their Blue Flags in the latest round of awards from An Taisce. According to The Irish Times, the popular surfing haunt of Bundoran in Co Donegal, along with Bertra Strand and Golden…
An Irish Sailing 'team racing development programme' has been awarded a grant under the FLAG scheme
The Irish Youth Sailing Club is one of the recipients of grant funding awarded by Ireland’s seven Fisheries Local Action Groups (FLAGs) to 274 coastal based projects at the weekend. Another FLAG grant awardee from the world of Irish Sailing…
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Michael Creed
Over 270 coastal projects have been awarded grants totalling four million euro in EU and State funds just five days before the European Parliament elections. The grants to 274 projects across seven coastal regions were announced yesterday by Minister for Agriculture,…
The remains of a D-Day Mulberry harbour at Arromanches, Normandy in France
#coastalnotes - With just weeks leading up to D-Day, 75 years ago, one of the operation’s crucial components was still lying on the bottom of the sea off southern England, reports The Irish Times. It comprised a vast amount of…
The Lusitania’s main telegraph was recovered in a supervised dive off Kinsale on 25 July 2017
The US businessman owner of the Lusitania wreck off the West Cork coast has gifted it to a local heritage group planning a new museum around the historic vessel, as the Irish Examiner reports. Gregg Bemis signed over the wreck…
Galley Cove in Crookhaven, Co Cork
Ireland is a veritable bounty of beautiful beaches, as TripAdvisor’s latest list of Ireland’s best can attest. But beyond the most highly rated bathing spots around the Irish coast, there exists a number of hidden gems to attract those seeking…
Milford Marina in south Wales has seen improvements carried out by the Port of Milford Haven which will enable faster access arrangement for its marina and dock customers. The Pembrokeshire port is the busiest in Wales and is the UK’s top energy port handling seaborne trade in oil and gas. The port also has a ferry service to Rosslare Harbour, Ireland operated by Irish Ferries.
#coastalnotes - The Port of Milford Haven, south Wales has completed further improvements to its lock gates at Milford Marina. The works by the port authority have created a more flexible and faster access arrangement for the marina and its…
“The change in weather has been affecting the seed – we have had very little this year.” Mussel fisherman, Bangor, Wales, by Róisín Curé
A series of watercolour illustrations and interviews have captured the importance of the ocean to coastal communities in Ireland and Wales as part of the EU-funded BlueFish Project. Sharon Sugrue, scientific and technical officer at the Marine Institute, and Galway’s…
Freshwater pearl mussels Margaritifera margaritifera
Projects for pearl mussels and conservation of breeding curlew are among the 23 schemes being carried out nationwide under the European Innovation Partnership (EIP), as highlighted in a new exhibition in Dublin. Agriculture House on Kildare Street is currently showcasing…
Coastal Patrol Vessel (CPV) LÉ Orla is one of a pair of Peacock class in the Irish Naval Service and is seen berthed yesterday in Kinsale Harbour. Vehicles of the Irish Coast Guard are parked on Customs Quay which AFLOAT adds is the sole commercial quay in the south-west Co. Cork harbour.
#coastalnotes - Communities along the coast reports Independent.ie have been warned that local intelligence is critical if Ireland is to win the battle against drug-smuggling gangs. Gardaí, Customs and Excise, and the Naval Service urged people suspicious of any activities…
Hoylake RNLI volunteers and other emergency services worked together to free the trapped horse on the Wirral coast
Horse riders and owners have been warned over taking their animals to beaches or mudflats after two separate rescue incidents in the UK in recent days Last Saturday (13 April) two horses and their riders were rescued from thick mud…
Cormac Lowth is one of Ireland’s leading amateur maritime historians. The support of his late wife Barbara has enabled him to develop a remarkable collection of material
The heartfelt sympathies of all those with extensive interests in the culture and history of the maritime world are with Cormac Lowth of Dublin and his sons on the sad loss of his wife and their mother Barbara, writes W…
A computer rendering of the proposed Páirc na Mara in Connemara
Galway Bay FM reports that An Bord Pleanála has refused planning permission for a development at a Connemara site overseen by Udarás na Gaeltachta. Plans for the Páirc na Mara facility were previously approved by Galway County Council, but continued…

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.