A FLOATING Fastnet Maritime Heritage Museum is to be created in West Cork later this year.

John Kearney, who is considered to be one of the country’s most experienced divers, confirmed that his company Muirí Carraige Aonair Teo (Fastnet Marine) has gathered a catalogue of historical information from wrecks around the coast which will go on display.

The company, which draws on the support of a big team including volunteers, has been exploring on average 15 wrecks a year since it was established three years ago.

John, who has almost 40 years’ diving experience, mentioned Michael McCarthy, Shane Begley, Jerry Vaughan, and Aleksandras Kaliberda among the West Cork contingent, adding: ‘We have been going around the Irish coasts trying to uncover parts of our maritime history for the museum which we are hoping to launch after the summer.’

The floating exhibition space will be on board his support vessel, the Alk, a former Germany survey ship that was acquired by John three years ago.

The company owns not one but two submersibles: the first submarine, the Atlantic Explorer 1, which can dive to a depth of 330ft for eight hours, was acquired in March 2024.

The second submarine, a Super Yacht Sub 3 model that can carry three people and dive for up to 12 hours to depths of 300m, was acquired early in 2025.

John and his team of experienced ex-navy and military divers  have made a number of incredible discoveries.

He describes their work as being ‘like a jigsaw: it is not as straightforward as merely identifying wrecks. What we do is record the footage on all of them and spend the winter months doing research and uncovering the history of them.

‘In this regard, we work with the researchers at the National Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire to reveal the history of the wrecks that we uncover.

‘We want to display this information down here in the Fastnet Maritime Heritage Museum because we have an incredible resource of history off our coast and nothing to show for it.’

John, who previously trained as a diver with the Irish Navy and has a pilot’s licence, has operated the Baltimore Diving and Watersports Centre since 1993.

Throughout his career, he was a guiding light in numerous search and rescue missions, including a month-long, grid formation search of the sea bed in Glandore Harbour, following the sinking of the Tit Bonhomme on January 15th 2012.

He is also credited with being the person to propose, and fundraise for, a charity air ambulance service that has since been rebranded as ‘Critical’ under auspices of the Health Service Executive.

John is a native of Baltimore, but he now lives with his family on a farm on Cape Clear Island.

He said he is greatly encouraged by the level of interest in this, his latest project.

‘We are uncovering history: some of the stories are incredible, so it’s important to us to have a place where we can display all of these fascinating stories.’