The Irish Sea

The Irish Sea (Muir Eireann) is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean, situated between the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain, bordered to the north by the North Channel* and to the south by the St Georges Channel**.

The Irish Sea is an important regional shipping, trade and transport area with large resources of natural gas, oil and wind power, which also supports several major recreational, tourist and sporting industries along it's coastline.

Twenty thousand years ago, at the end of the last ice age, the Irish Sea had been a shallow, freshwater lake, but as glacial deposits north of the lake began to swell the lake's waters, the lake became brackish eventually becoming fully saline around ten thousand years ago, making the Irish Sea, Europe's youngest body of water.

The Irish Sea is one hundred and thirty miles long and between fifty and one hundred and forty miles wide, with a surface area covering forty thousand square miles.The sea has an overall depth of around three hundred and fifty feet.

The sea is home to over fifty small islands, many of them tidal islands and most of them uninhabited.The two largest islands are the Welsh, Isle of Anglesey and the independently governed, Isle of Man.The Irish Sea is also home to England's Wirral Peninsula and Wales' Llyn Peninsula and the U.K's first coastal National Park, situated on Wales' Pembroke Coast.

Four major rivers flow into the Irish Sea, the River Clyde in Scotland, the River Dee in Wales, the River Liffey in the Republic of Ireland and the River Mersey in England. These river estuaries with their large, muddy sea beds are a rich source of wildlife and are home to several nature reserves, particularly the vast estuary basins situated on the Solway Firth in Scotland, Morecambe Bay and Liverpool Bay in England, Dublin Bay in the Republic of Ireland, Caernarfon Bay and Cardigan Bay in Wales and Carlingford Lough and Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.

According to Greenpeace, the Irish Sea is the most heavily, nuclear contaminated sea in the world (0.22mSv per annum) leaving it little used in the way of commercial fishing, but despite this, the sea still harbors a wealth of marine life, including seven species of whale, two species of dolphin, two species of seal and one porpoise, as well as an abundance of crustacean species including mussels, scallops, prawns, crabs and cuttlefish.

The shoreline of the Irish Sea has become an important migratory flyway and stop over for thousands of sea birds travelling between Scandinavia and South Africa as well as a regular, nesting site of at least twenty one species of sea bird. It's large, silty river estuaries are also favoured spots as nurseries for many species of flat fish, herring and sea bass.

Commercially the Irish Sea is an important regional ferry and transport route between it's two neighbours the United Kingdom and The Republic of Ireland and is home to the large Irish ports of Dublin, Rosslare and Dun Loghaire, the English ports of Liverpool, Fleetwood and Birkenhead and the Welsh ports of Holyhead and Fishguard.

The Irish Sea is also the site of the United Kingdom's largest ship building and only submarine building facility, at England's Cumbrian, coastal town of Barrow - in - Furness.

The Irish Sea is an important natural energy source with nine large, combined gas and oil fields - five situated at Liverpool Bay, two situated at Cardigan Bay and two situated at Caernarvon Bay.

There are also five windfarms - situated at North Hoyle, Rhyl in north Wales with ten turbines, Burbo Bank on the Wirral Peninsula with twenty five turbines, Walney Island, Cumbria with thirty turbines, Cloggerhead in the Republic of Ireland with fifty five turbines and the Robin Rigg on the Solway Firth in Scotland with sixty turbines. There are also plans for another five windfarms which will make up four hundred and thirty one turbines in all.

There is also a nuclear power station situated at Sellafield in Cumbria, England which has been the cause of low level radio active waste - plutonium, technitium and caesium - being discharged into the waters of the Irish Sea since nineteen fifty two.

The Irish Sea coastline is also an important regional, recreational area, which has a wealth of award winning beaches and large seaside resorts, including Blackpool, Southport and Morecambe in England, Aberystwyth and Llandudno in Wales, Bray and Malahide in the Republic of Ireland, Larne in Northern ireland and the golfing resorts of Turnberry and Troon in Scotland. The two large islands of Anglesey and the Isle of Man are also popular tourist and sporting destinations.

The Irish Sea's four major, coastal cities, three of which are national capitals, are Belfast in Northern Ireland, Douglas on the Isle of Man, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland and Liverpool in England.

For many years now there have been plans to implement a cross Irish Sea tunnel between the port of Rosslare in the Republic of Ireland and the port of Fishguard in Wales - which would make it technically situated in the St Georges Channel*. The proposed fifty mile long tunnel, which was first recommended as far back as 1890, would be of immense, economical importance for the Republic of Ireland, seeing as it is the only country within the European Union without a direct land link to either the U.K or the rest of Continental Europe.

The Irish Sea Coastal Observatory and meteorological station is situated on Hilbre Island off the coast of England's Wirral Peninsula which measures daily currents, wave height, wind speed, water temperature and water salinity levels.

* St Georges Channel is situated between Carnsore Point in the Republic of Ireland and St David's Head, Wales and connects the Irish Sea with the Celtic Sea. The Celtic Sea, situated off the Republic of Ireland's south, west coast has no land borders being surrounded by the waters of England's Bristol Channel and English Channel and France's Bay of Biscay.

** The North Channel is a twenty one mile stretch of water situated between County Antrim in Northern Ireland and the Mull of Galloway in south, west Scotland which links the Irish Sea with the Atlantic Ocean.The North Channel consists of the Straits of Moyle, between County Antrim and the Mull of Kintyre - which is just twelve miles wide - and the thirty one mile long by two mile wide and nine hundred feet deep underwater trench known as Beaufort's Dyke. Beaufort's Dyke became a site of controversy during the years after the second World War when it became the dump site for scrapped or unused munitions. In recent years it has been a site of interest for the building of a rail tunnel to link Northern Ireland with Scotland.

FIND IRISH SEA FERRY PORTS AND INTER ISLAND JOURNEY TIMES AT OUR PAGE

Major UK and Ireland air and sea ports.

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