Welcome to the Atlantic Edge, a growing collection of stories and images from Ireland’s western seaboard.

 

I settled on the Loop Head Peninsula in County Clare in 2002 and started a career first as a photographer and later also as a writer and researcher. I have published more than 20 books and have worked in tourism, nature conservation, community development and the renewable energy transition. This wild mixture has taught me one thing: Everything is connected. While I would be happy to see most of the Irish coast and countryside being given back to nature, I also know this would not work. People are part of the fabric, as are trees, wildflowers, birds, insects and all the other plants and animals we share the planet with.

 

This blog will explore the connection of all living things in the past, present and future, and ways to bring back a balance between them by looking at the microcosm of Ireland’s west coast. This stretch of land at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean is starting to see the impacts of human induced climate change, growing plastic pollution is more than evident and the biodiversity crisis presents itself in shrinking numbers of breeding seabirds, increasing strandings of cetaceans and the disappearance of insects.

 

But Ireland’s west coast will also be the stage of major undertakings to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions and limit the impacts of climate change with the constructions of large offshore wind farms, rewilding projects try to restore habitats and give nature more space are already underway and the efforts to reduce the use of plastic and other pollutants are growing.

 

This is what this blog is all about: stories of people, stories of the landscape, stories of birds, stories of trees, … stories from the Atlantic edge.