Atlantic Ocean - Irish SeaThe Irish sea is a sea that separates Ireland from the UK mainland. It is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by St George's Channel between the Republic of Ireland and Wales and Cornwall to the south and by the North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland to the north-east. The Isle of Man lies in the middle of the Irish Sea. The sea is of high economic importance to regional trade, shipping and transport, fishing and power generation in the form of wind power and nuclear plants. There has been long discussion of building an 80 km (50 mile) rail tunnel to link Britain and Ireland. Traffic between the two islands amounts to over 12 million passengers and 17 megatonnes of trade per year.
The Irish Sea is also the name of one of the BBC's Shipping Forecast areas. The Irish Sea has undergone a series of dramatic changes over the last 20,000 years as the last ice age ended and was replaced by warmer conditions. At the height of the ice age the central part of the modern sea was probably a long freshwater lake. As the ice retreated 10,000 years ago the lake reconnected to the sea, becoming brackish and then fully saline once again. During the World War I the Irish Sea became known as “U-boat Alley”. After the United States entered the war in 1917, the U-boats moved their emphasis from the Atlantic to the Irish Sea. The Irish Sea is well known for it's mass oil drilling. The East Irish Sea basin has an estimated 7.5 trillion cubic feet (210 km³) of gas and 176 million barrels (28,000,000 m³) of oil for recovery. East Irish Sea Basin is at a mature exploration phase. Production from all fields is from fault-bounded traps of the Lower Triassic formation, principally aeolian Sherwood Sandstone reservoir, top-sealed by younger Triassic continental mud stones and evaporites. The Caernarfon Bay Basin contains up to 7 km of Permian and Triassic syn-rift sediments in an asymmetrical depressed block of land bordered by parallel faults that is bounded to the north and south by Lower Paleozoic massifs. Only two exploration wells have been drilled so far, and there remain numerous undrilled targets in tilted fault block plays. The Cardigan Bay Basin forms a continuation into UK waters of Ireland’s North Celtic Sea Basin, which has two producing gas fields. The Cardigan Bay Basin contains multiple reservoir targets, which include the Lower Triassic Sherwood Sandstone, Middle Jurassic shallow marine sandstones and limestone, and Upper Jurassic fluvial sandstone. The Liverpool Bay Development is BHP Billiton Petroleum's largest operated asset. It comprises the integrated development of five offshore oil and gas fields in the Irish Sea: Douglas oil field The conditions of the Irish Sea can be very rough, strong winds can cause quite huge waves to come over the promenades. In Wales, such places as Colwyn bay and Ross On sea have been known to have their pavements and roads flooded with tidal waters of over 15 feet high. The tides of Rhyl in North Wales are known to be very dangerous. They are known as quick tides in which the sea can come in very quickly and in turn recede very quickly aswell. Many a person has become stranded on areas of sand that have been shut off by the incoming waters. The Irish Sea is also notorious for it's Jellyfish, particularly on the North Welsh coastline. Should you stand upon the pier in Llandudno you can see many Jellyfish floating below, many become stranded upon the beach as the tide goes out. Interesting to see, but they should not be touched as they can have a nasty sting! |
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