Displaying items by tag: STEC

1st June 2021

Deadly Bacteria Not Looked For in Bathing Water Quality Checks, Scientists Warn

Scientists at NUI Galway warn that a deadly bacteria found in many highly rated sea swimming spots in Ireland is not currently tested for as EU regulations do not require it.

According to The Irish Independent, reseaechers with NUI Galway’s PIER Project found that more than half (57%) of all samples it collected from coastal bathing areas tested positive for Shiga toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC).

Lake and river bathing areas fared even worse, with 78% of sites samples showing signs of the particularly virulent form of E. coli.

The researchers said all of the sampled sea bathing areas — in Galway, Cork and Fingal — that had STEC present have been rated good to excellent for water quality by EU standards.

“These findings highlight the need to consider revision of current EU bathing water quality monitoring criteria,” the PIER Project’s Professor Dearbháile Morris said.

The Irish Independent has much more on the story HERE.

Published in Coastal Notes

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New York Yacht Club’s biennial Invitational Cup

Ireland has a proud history in New York Yacht Club’s biennial Invitational Cup, with Irish participation from the very start and a podium result in 2019.

In 2009, two Irish Clubs, Royal St. George in Dun Laoghaire and Royal Cork in Crosshaven, entered into New York's newest sailing competition that was reminiscent of Newport’s America’s Cup days when 19 yacht club teams from 14 nations descended on this “City by the Sea”.

The Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup is a competition between yacht clubs, with strict eligibility rules ensuring that each team is comprised exclusively of amateur sailors.

The competition, which was first run in 2009, has drawn entries from 49 clubs from 22 nations on all six inhabited continents.

The New York Yacht Club won the inaugural event in 2009, with the Royal Canadian Yacht Club winning in 2011 and 2013, England's Royal Thames Yacht Club winning in 2015 and Southern Yacht Club from New Orleans winning in 2017.

In 2019 the regatta was sailed for the first time in the New York Yacht Club’s fleet of IC37 yachts, and Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, from Australia, became the first Southern Hemisphere club to win the trophy. And it was in this edition that Anthony O’Leary’s Royal Cork team took the bronze medal.