Every Dive Site in Kilkee, on One Map

Twenty-two sites, one map

There are twenty-two named dive sites within a short boat ride of the East Pier, and a handful you can walk into. They are all now on one map on the Dive Sites page. Click any number and that site opens beside it: the depth range, who it suits, and what the ground actually does down there.

The numbering is the same as our own dive site maps going back to 2007, so if you have dived with us before it will look familiar.

Why Kilkee works when other places don't

Kilkee bay faces away from the worst of the Atlantic swell, sheltered by the Duggerna Reef. That is the whole reason there is a dive centre here. On days when sites further up and down the coast are unworkable, there is often still diving in Kilkee. If you are only in Clare for a few days, that matters more than any brochure.

Is diving on today?

There is now a live conditions flag at the top of the page. It reads the wind and swell and tells you whether it is worth ringing before you travel.

It is built around the thing visitors get wrong most often. We are on the west coast, so an easterly is an offshore wind here: it flattens the sea rather than wrecking it. A blowy day from the east can be one of the best days of the year underwater. It is the onshore winds, southwest round through west to north, that put the outer rocks and the boat dives out. Wind speed on its own tells you nothing at all.

The flag never tells you a site is diveable. That call is ours on the day, and it always ends with ringing us.

Six we haven't written up

Six sites on the map have no description yet: Nikki's Alley, Inner Rock, Inner Georges, Outer Georges, Lackglass and Muragha Reef. We hope to have these done soon and if you want to help use send on your descriptions of these or any other sites you think should be on the list.

And the twenty-third pin

Number 23 is not a dive site. It is the Greyhound Bar, known to everyone in Kilkee as the Skinny Dog, and it is where the day finishes once the kit is rinsed and hung up. Diving's answer to the nineteenth hole. It has been on the map since 2011 and it is staying.

Depths on the map are the general range at a site, not a dive plan. Several are experienced-diver sites and some only go on a particular state of the tide. The map is schematic and is not for navigation.