Sandycove Beach

The dive

This is the Dublin Sandycove, the small cove between Dun Laoghaire and Dalkey on the south side of Dublin Bay, immediately beside the Forty Foot bathing place. It is not the Sandycove near Kinsale in Co. Cork. The cove is a genuine dive site rather than only a swimming spot: the Curragh Sub Aqua Club, founded in 1958, occupies a restored Victorian bathhouse on the waterfront here with compressors, nitrox and hot showers, and both Dublin University and UCD sub-aqua clubs list Sandycove in their own dive guides as a shore site. What it is used for is training. DUSAC calls it a small sheltered beach suitable for shore diving, best approached at high water, and describes it as popular for novice training and assessed dives.

The entry is a short walk. UCD's guide points to a small jetty about 200 m south of the Forty Foot swimming area, its end marked by a yellow metal post with a ball top, and warns about rocks at low tide; Snorkelling Ireland describes two small piers in the cove and a beach ramp that divers and training schools use. The depths in the sources disagree and the difference is real rather than a contradiction: DUSAC gives up to 6 m for the beach itself, while UCD describes a ridge running out that drops to around 15 m and beyond, reached by swimming north-east towards the first buoy or out of the harbour towards the third yellow buoy before descending. The PADI record for the site, filed by Irish Scuba Academy, gives 15 m as the maximum.

The honest limitation is the water. DUSAC says visibility is usually poor, particularly near the shore, and that there is not much marine life beyond the odd starfish. A 2022 account from Snorkelling Ireland is more generous on life, listing lobster, crab, grey seals and kelp, but blunt about conditions: the seafloor is very silty, wind and tide can reduce or eliminate visibility, south and east winds bring currents and surface chop that can be surprisingly strong, and this is a busy shipping lane where dredging periodically muddies the water. There is a shipwreck anchor lying in water little more than waist deep at low tide.

One rule matters more than any of that. DUSAC states that local by-laws prohibit scuba diving in the Forty Foot swimming area next door, and gives the practical reason as well as the legal one: swimmers jump in off the rocks without any way of knowing a diver is underneath. The year-round cold-water swimming culture at the Forty Foot is what the place is famous for, and it is not diving. Stay in Sandycove itself.

• Shore entry from a jetty about 200 m south of the Forty Foot, marked by a yellow post with a ball top
• About 6 m inside the cove, with a ridge dropping to roughly 15 m off the point
• Used year round for novice training and assessed dives by Dublin clubs
• A shipwreck anchor lying in barely waist-deep water at low tide
• The Curragh Sub Aqua Club clubhouse, a restored Victorian bathhouse, is on the waterfront here

Conditions

A small sheltered cove on a rocky stretch of the south Dublin Bay shore, silty underneath, kelp on the rock. Visibility is usually poor, particularly near the shore, and wind and tide can take it away entirely; dredging in the shipping lane offshore adds to that. The sources disagree on how much lives here, with one club calling it thin beyond the odd starfish and a 2022 snorkelling account listing lobster, crab, grey seals and kelp. It is busy in summer with swimmers and divers together.

On current: Inside the cove the sources treat it as sheltered, and DUSAC advises approaching at high water. The 2022 Snorkelling Ireland account is the one that qualifies that: south and east winds produce currents and surface chop that can be surprisingly strong, and wind and tide together stir a very silty bottom. Depth is where the sources genuinely differ. DUSAC gives up to 6 m for the beach; UCD describes a ridge dropping to about 15 m and beyond off the point, and the operator-filed PADI record gives 15 m. Treat 6 m as the cove and 15 m as the ridge, not as one figure.

Dives & underwater footage