There is no doubt the seas off Kerry's coast are home to a deep vault from which many of history's secrets lie undisturbed.
rom time to time, rare signs of this underworld are brought to the surface as is evidenced by the recent find of elephant tusks, most likely to have come from a slave ship making its way from west Africa in the 18th or early 19th centuries.
The tusks were found in the haul of a fishing trawler named Cu Na Mara about 190km west of Dingle and they are currently being housed at the National Museum of Ireland where samples will be taken in order to source an approximate date.
Marine biologist and Dingle Oceanworld director Kevin Flannery passed the tusks over to Connie Kelleher, an underwater archaeologist with the National Parks & Wildlife Service (NPWS), who is currently working on ship wrecks off the coast of Ireland.
Initially, it was thought the tusks were from a mammoth dating to the pre-ice age but it was later confirmed by experts in Dublin and the Netherlands that they are in fact elephant tusk.
DNA analysis will be taken to try and ascertain where in Africa they originate from.
"We already have a record of one of these ships [slave ships] off the west Cork coast that is thought to have been on a line from Guinea to the UK in the 18th century," said Kevin.
"When they were transporting ivory during that period they were also transporting slaves who would have been so far down the list in terms of the ship's cargo."
Kevin explains that the tusks are also a reminder of the dark period in history when little regard for human life was given to people in Africa by developing European nations in their quest to source raw materials and labour.
"It's ironic that such a thing turns up in a week when racism and man's inhumanity to man from so-called powerful, first world nations begins to show itself up. It just makes us more aware of what was done in the name of humanity," Kevin said.
Kevin also raises the worrying trend of scavanging off the Irish coast that is disturbing many ship wrecks purely to profit from the sale of its cargo.
President Michael D. Higgins recently brought in legislation to protect any wrecks within a 12-mile radius of the Irish coast, largely due to pillaging of the Lusitania that sank 11-miles off the Cork coast in 1915.
"I've had reports from fishermen of large vessels scavenging sunken liners, etc. Many people who go to sea regard it as a graveyard and it should be left alone and respected," he said.
