Cork Harbour and Approaches
Cuan Chorcaí
Overview
The natural harbour of Cork Harbour is located on the south coast of Ireland, inside the headlands of Roches Point to the east and Weaver’s Point to the west. The distance across this narrow mouth is just less than 1.5 kilometres.
Within the bay, there are a number of islands including Great Island, Spike Island, Rocky Island, Hawlbowline Island, Corkbeg Island, Little Island, Weir Island, Foaty Island, Brown Island, Brick Island, Harper’s Island and Hop Island.
A number of rivers enter the harbour, most notably the River Lee at Cork City in the upper reaches but also the River Owenabue at Crosshaven, the River Minane at Ringabella on the westend shores of the harbour and the River Ballynacorra at Ballynacorra to the east.
Cork Harbour, with others, is claimed to be the second largest deep water port in the world behind Sydney, Australia.
Location of Cork Harbour in Co. Cork on the south coast of Ireland.
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INFOMAR Survey History
INFOMAR surveys of Cork Harbour and Approaches began in 2005 when the Celtic Voyager was used to map an area just seaward of the harbour mouth and along the shipping channel up to the Port of Cork. In 2007, the surveyed area around the mouth of the harbour was extended, again with the voyager as the survey vessel. The Celtic Voyager mapped a large portion of the seabed off the Cork coast from the Old Head to Ballycotton in 2008 that included a large portion of the approaches to Cork Harbour.
Coverage from survey legs undertaken to survey Cork Harbour to date.
(Click image for more detailed map)
Details of INFOMAR surveys undertaken in Cork Harbour. (Click image for more detail)
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Shaded Relief
MBES shaded relief image of the seabed seaward of the mouth of Cork Harbour showing a meandering channel feature between rock outcrops.(Click image for more detailed map)
MBES shaded relief image of a pipeline partially covered by sediment running offshore off the coast of Cork. (Click image for more detailed map)
Detailed MBES shaded relief image of an area of rock outcrop off the Cork coast at Robert’s Head, west of the mouth of Cork Harbour. This image clearly illustrates that submarine rock outcrops follow a similar strike direction of ENE to WSW, as seen in onland outcrops of sedimentary rocks which are predominantly composed of sedimentary rocks, mainly sandstones, siltstones and mudstones which are Devonian (410 to 354 million years ago) and Carboniferous (354 to 298 million years ago) in age. Also visible are areas where folding and distortion of the rock layers has occurred when horizontal layers of sedimentary rocks are exposed to tectonic forces during events such as mountain building events, namely the Variscan Orogeny and to a lesser extent the Alpine Orogeny. (Click image for more detailed map)
A more detailed chart of the shaded relief of the surveyed areas around Cork Harbour will be available once INFOMAR surveys of the area have been completed. Back to Top
INFOMAR in Google Earth
To view and navigate around the 2007 Cork Harbour Hydrographic Survey dataset in Google Earth,
click here
To view additional datasets in Google Earth please click here
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Data Access
Full details outlining the process to gain access to datasets for the bay above or all INFOMAR data can be found in the INFOMAR | Data page of this website.
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Return to Survey Details Map
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