Sea all the action!

Aine O'Boyle

With over 160 scuba dives under their belts, the Bray Divers are proving to be one of the most active scuba diving clubs across the country.

According to the founder of the Bray Divers/Wicklow Aquanauts Scuba Diving Club, Albert Kerr, this is because the club is incredibly lucky to be situated so close to the sea.

“We’re one of the few clubs that’s so close to the water that you can put suit on in the club and go about 30 yards and you’re into the water,” he said.

Despite being located in Greystones, the club attracts people from all across Dublin, from Swords to Lucan.

“We have a fantastic custom made building in the harbour in Greystones,” said Kerr.

In order to become a club member, one must partake in 10 and 20 minute lectures to gain an insight into what the club is all about.

“That takes place over two nights, and then the next thing is they come into the pool and they do a swimming test,” said Kerr.

“Then they go into the sea and they do three to five snorkles before they qualify as a snorkeler, and after that, the world is theirs.”

The diving lessons are very much focused on the individual.

Kerr said: “Our training is not a class structure situation, it’s individual, so a person does their training at the pace that suits themselves, they don’t have to keep up with a class.

“It doesn’t matter if it takes them a month to get something done, or a week, or an hour, it’s individual.”

The opening hours of the club are also made to suit the 9-5 office worker, the stay-at-home parent or the shift worker.

“The training and the course can be centred around the availability of the person,” Kerr added.

The club operates on a voluntary basis, meaning that the scuba trainers are not being paid. According to Kerr: “We’re probably the cheapest club in the country.”

The individualistic nature of scuba diving serves to be one of its greatest selling points, it is not reliant on competition and can be done at the leisure of the scuba diver themselves.

“If a person is into scuba diving, they’re number one, it’s not competitive,” said Kerr.“Everybody wins, there’s no losers.”

Scuba diving also knows no age, with Kerr’s most recent recruit being a fit and healthy 71-year-old.

“It’s never too late. Once they’re able to get into the water and the doctor says they’re okay, there’s no problem,” he said.

The club currently has a membership of 20 divers, with room for at least another six to 12 members.

Aside from scuba diving, the club also partakes in a number of other activities while in the water, ranging from underwater clean-ups to biodiversity studies.

Kerr notes that when the divers enter into the marine environment, they are at one with the aquatic animals there.

“While we’re there we now work to clean up anything that’s down there, plastic, rubbish and ever diver has an onus to bring up at least five pieces of rubbish if they can find them,” he said.

“As we’ve been doing that we’ve been finding less and less rubbish, so the whole place is getting a lot cleaner, especially with plastic.”

Along with the underwater cleaning, the club also does a monthly underwater survey in Greystones Harbour and the Nun’s Cove, sending on the results to biodiversity Ireland.

The club itself is well-recognised internationally, boasting a membership to the Irish Underwater Council of which is affiliated to the International Underwater Council.

“That’s why we have worldwide recognition,” said Kerr.

“The standard of training from the bottom to the top in all countries is the same.”

With membership to the club comes the opportunity to dive locally, nationally and abroad.

“We’re just back from ten dives in Lanzarote, but we dive all over the country, in lakes and quarries and in the sea,” he added.