Another Life Michael VineyNow that even Louisburgh has its own surfing store, and nearby Carrowniskey Strand has become, to quote a fan, "a rapid place to surf - the waves are mental when it's offshore", I find myself watching the breakers after storms in quite a different way.
That incredible picture, a couple of years ago, of the surfer poised on a 10m wave surging in to the Cliffs of Moher added a whole new wistfulness to my ageing fantasy life.
Not, I imagine, that many of the lads (well, they are, mostly) are heading west this weather, but any promise of a northeast wind against a westerly swell might tempt the odd rubber-sheathed stoic to this lonely shore, just around the corner from Clew Bay. The website to consult is the remarkable www.windguru.cz which, from the Czech Republic of all places, predicts windspeed, wave height and period, for a week ahead, on virtually every strand in Ireland - or, for that matter, in most of the ocean world.
Any time I check for Carrowniskey, it's spot on. Exactly how it's done I'm not sure, though it clearly uses data from the global network of ocean weather buoys. The Marine Institute now operates six of them around the island. Number Six was added in 2006, far to the west of the Aran Islands, moored to a three-tonne weight in 3,000m of water at the mouth of the Rockall Trough. Every hour, it updates its report on everything capable of measurement.
That, indeed, is the urgent objective now applied to the ocean as a whole. As the planet's atmosphere warms, it is the seas that will manage the extra heat, storing it and releasing it in rain, circulating it in a swirl of currents. As ice melts, north and south, ocean systems could and will change.
The fear that Arctic meltwater could slow or halt the flow of the "conveyor belt" that draws winter warmth to Europe has eased substantially among scientists, at least for the immediate future. It rested on a few short-term samples of an ocean system now realised to have big natural fluctuations: one alarming analysis that the flow had weakened by 30 per cent in a decade was based on just five research results spread over 30 years.
The lack of data was really quite startling. To help remedy it, 23 countries, including Ireland, have combined in the Argo Project. This is sowing the oceans with floats that drift below the surface, measuring temperature and salinity, and popping up every 10 days to broadcast their figures to satellites.
So far, there are more than 3,000 floats, spaced some 300km apart. The Marine Institute is contributing a dozen of them and launched the first into the Rockall Trough last month from its research vessel MV Celtic Explorer. Another array of deep marine sensors, called Rapid Watch, are to be installed in the Gulf Stream between Florida and the Canary Islands, to detect any significant change in the flow of its huge Atlantic gyre.
Last month also brought to Ireland the American oceanographer John Delaney, a charismatic figure with a mariner's silver beard and a veteran of some 60 dives, in the famous Alvin research submarine, to the abyssal seabed.
Now, his vision is to strew great reaches of the ocean floor with fibre optic cables linking sensors and robot observatories to the internet.
Based at the University of Washington, Prof Delaney is well launched on wiring a large sector of the Pacific's Juan de Fuca Plate and its overlying ocean into "an internationally accessible, interactive, real-time natural laboratory".
Something similar is planned for Europe, with the Marine Institute leading the way. It will start off modestly, with a loop of sensors in Galway Bay, monitoring the underwater conditions as far as the Aran Islands and plugged in to the institute's headquarters at Oranmore.
Later, with that experience, and some European partners, the much more ambitious Celtnet project will send fibre optic cable looping out from Waterville, Co Kerry to the depths beyond the Porcupine Basin, linking seven observatories on the way there and back.
By that time, the Marine Institute will have its own remotely operated vehicle (ROV), built with robotic inputs from Limerick and Galway universities. These are exciting, ambitious times in Ireland's exploration of the sea, some sense of which might rub off on students applying for 44 work-experience placements the institute is offering this summer. The areas include climate change research and seabed mapping and the eight-week placements carry a bursary - details at www.marine.ie.
Eye On Nature
My wife and I were strolling beside the River Dodder, and we saw a kingfisher sweep up the river and then return. Only the second time we have seen this wonderful sight.
David McCabe, Blackrock, Co Dublin
Three times in late January a red admiral visited my garden. On one occasion it was feeding on the flowers of Viburnum bodnantense and looked in good condition. On the first two occasions the day was sunny with temperatures around 15 degrees; on the third, sunny but 5.8 degrees.
Joe Kelly, Blackrock, Co Dublin
The red admiral obviously over-wintered here and was lured out by the unseasonably high temperatures.
Our robins have developed a liking for pellets of fish food. They take them off the surface of fish pond. In spring they store the pellets under the leaves of a nearby hosta and bring their young along to be fed from the store.
Ray Murphy, Derry
What way - up or down - do I plant my chestnut and oak seeds which I have stored in sand all winter.
Niall Stack, Listowel, Co Kerry
With the sprouting side up.