New Survey of Clare Island Volume 6: The Freshwater and Terrestrial Algae

The Academy has recently published Volume 6: The Freshwater and Terrestrial Algae. Clare Island is one of the few known ‘hotspots’ of algal diversity in the world. As a result of a comprehensive survey by a team of specialists, the island is now one of the most intensively worked sites in Ireland and Britain, and it has an amazingly rich algal flora, encompassing well over 700 species.

 This new volume from the Royal Irish Academy reports on their work, providing the most comprehensive description of Irish freshwater and terrestrial algae published in modern times. The volume’s beautiful illustrations and images will intrigue amateur natural historians as well as providing an importance reference work for academics and professionals involved in water quality.

Volume 6 was launched in the Marine Institute, Galway by Dr T.K Whitaker MRIA on Tuesday 18 December 2007.  More details

New Survey of Clare Island Volume 5 Archaeology

Volume 5 of the series describes the impressive array of field monuments on this small Atlantic island. The 5,000- year-old megalithic tomb, the dozens of fulachtaí fia and the series of spectacularly sited coastal promontory forts all offer fascinating insights into prehistoric settlement. A well-preserved series of architectural remains, including two early nineteenth-century lighthouses and a signal tower, as well as a medieval castle and the Abbey, also serve to illusminate island life from medieval times down to the nineteenth century. More details

Article by Dr Peter Harbison is Honorary Academic Editor of the Royal Irish Academy: The volume is able to report considerable progress having been made, for instance, on the unexpected location of a megalithic tomb on the island, which helps considerably in filling out the picture of the earliest inhabitants of four or five thousand years ago - the editors being punctilious in pointing out that it is, in many cases, the modern inhabitants of the island who have made these discoveries themselves, which they then duly communicated to the visiting researchers. Click here to read more