A security alert over an unidentified object picked up by a Dunmore East fishing vessel on Tuesday was stood down yesterday when Naval Service divers discovered that the five-tonne object was a 1.5 cubic metre rock - possibly a meteorite.
Skipper Denis Harding of the Silvie Liddy reported on Tuesday evening that the object had become snagged in the trawler's nets and that the boat could proceed to shore only at a speed of three knots as the object was dragging at a depth of 35 metres. Following a rendezvous off Hook Head with the patrol ship, LE Emer, a half-mile exclusion zone was placed around the vessel. Naval divers examined the object at first light yesterday using four one-tonne lifting bags to raise it to 15 metres and free it from the trawl. They then dropped it on to a nearby rock shelf. Mr Brian Crummey, the vessel's owner, said the skipper and two crew were not alarmed by the security alert. "We felt that at five tonnes it was probably too heavy to be a mine," he said.
