John Ó'Ríordáns Blog

I was looking for some good books on Marine Wildlife in Ireland and a Scuba Diving Club member recommended the following. I thought I’d post it hear for anyone who is interested.

There are a number of posters and books out on marine mammals but one of the best around is called ”A Guide to the Identification of the Whales and Dolphin of Ireland” by Jim Wilson and Simon Berrow. Jim’s drawings are excellent and very informative. It’s spiral bound with a blue cover and if I remember correctly the book was only about €12/€15. It’s a relatively new book, only a year or two old, so there should be lots of copies around.

If you want fish i.e. guides then you are probably looking at ”Great British Marine Animals” by Paul Naylor. It’s not very in-dept with the text or descriptions but the photos are excellent – especially for a beginner wondering what he/she just saw. A good reference to have in the car to put an end to the after dive arguments about who saw what and where.

A more detailed book would be ”Mediterranean and Atlantic Fish Guide” by Helmut Debelius which has a nice balance of photos and text – it’s dearer than Naylor’s and not quite as quick to use. There’s a whole series of Debelius guides for different parts of the world and all are good.

A more scientific book would be ”Marine Fish & Invertebrates of Northern Europe” by Moen/Svensen but a lot of the fish in this are Scandinavian and the photos aren’t always the very best.

And sorry about the links being to the German Amazon but it’s nice to see the price in real money :)

I got a new camera yesterday. Nice one to a Samsung L830. I got it in Currys in Mahon. Funny thing was that I went into PC World first (who have had their Irish Website shutdown because they didn’t pay for it) but they wouldn’t show me the camera before I bought it! I asked the guy could he turn it on so I can see how the controls work, what the display size was like and how the picture appeared on the display. Very strange. I mean why would I want to buy a camera that I haven’t seen? That’s like buying a car that I couldn’t take for a test drive.

So I went next door to Currys and they showed me the camera, gave me the book so I could see the specs and let me play with it for a while. I was looking dubious so the guy said I could exchange it for a different camera if I didn’t like it. Perfect! So a sale of Currys at the expense of PC World all for the sake of plugging in a camera and leaving me look at it for 5 minutes.

Actually I got a few camera this year. I got an underwater camera and a video camera as well. All of them work perfectly in Linux. I’ve been using the Gimp and Picasso to edit the photos and the brilliant Kino to take videos from the camera.

The underwater camera also takes movies with sound underwater which is pretty cool. The picture quality isn’t the best but by messing with some of the settings I am getting them better and better. Pictures taken with a flash are perfect but that’s no use when I take it scuba diving as particles in the water will obscure the shot. Anyway I am sure I will figure it out.

I got an underwater camera from Lorri for my birthday. So come the summer hopefully I can post some nice underwater photos from around the Irish coast. It’s very cheap for an underwater camera. Not the most high tech (it doesn’t have an focus option) but its a great entry level camera. The next cheapest one I could find is around €499. I’ll let you know what the quality is like when I get a chance to use it. You can take it out of the case as well and it’s nice and small so it might be useful in the pub as well.

If you are interested in looking at underwater pictures from Ireland check out the Cork Sub-Aqua Club.

Hey all, no updates for a while because I am travelling in Thailand at the moment. Getting ready to go Scuba Diving now. Will have loads of photos for the Gallery when I get back.

Finally got around to updating the Gallery. It’s a bit difficult since I still don’t have broadband at home. Anyway I’ve updated the site with pics (and a movie) from Paddys Day, a few pics from the Old Head of Kinsale and Blarney Castle with Samir and Lorri and some from a pool in Cobh where myself and Owen started learning how to scuba dive.