Strangford Lough (from

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

''Strangr Fjörðr'', meaning "strong sea-inlet"PlaceNames NI
- Strangford Lough) is a large sea

loch ''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch. In English English and Hiberno-English, the anglicised spell ...

inlet An inlet is a (usually long and narrow) indentation of a shoreline, such as a small arm, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh, that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea. Overview In marine ...

County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to th ...

, in the east of

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label=Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is #Descriptions, variously described as ...

. It is the largest inlet in Ireland and the

British Isles The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isl ...

, covering . The lough is almost fully enclosed by the

Ards Peninsula The Ards Peninsula () is a peninsula in County Down, Northern Ireland, on the north-east coast of Ireland. It separates Strangford Lough from the North Channel of the Irish Sea. Towns and villages on the peninsula include Donaghadee, Mi ...

and is linked to the

Irish Sea The Irish Sea or , gv, Y Keayn Yernagh, sco, Erse Sie, gd, Muir Èireann , Ulster-Scots: ''Airish Sea'', cy, Môr Iwerddon . is an extensive body of water that separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is linked to the C ...

by a long narrow channel at its southeastern edge. The main body of the lough has at least seventy islands along with many islets (pladdies), bays, coves, headlands and mudflats. Historically it was called 'Lough Coan' ( Irish ''Loch Cuan'', "sea-inlet of bays/havens"), while 'Strangford' referred to the narrow sea channel. It is part of the 'Strangford and Lecale'

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; , AHNE) is an area of countryside in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, that has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Areas are designated in recognition of ...

. Strangford Lough was designated as Northern Ireland's first Marine Conservation Zone in 2013, and has been designated a

Special Area of Conservation A Special Area of Conservation (SAC) is defined in the European Union's Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), also known as the ''Directive on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora''. They are to protect the 220 habitats and a ...

for its important wildlife. Strangford Lough is a popular tourist destination noted for its fishing and scenery. Towns and villages around the lough include

Killyleagh Killyleagh (; ) is a village and civil parish in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is on the A22 road between Belfast and Downpatrick, on the western side of Strangford Lough. It had a population of 2,483 people in the 2001 Census. It is b ...

Comber Comber ( , , locally ) is a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies south of Newtownards, at the northern end of Strangford Lough. It is situated in the townland of Town Parks, the civil parish of Comber and the historic barony of Ca ...

Newtownards Newtownards is a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies at the most northern tip of Strangford Lough, 10 miles (16 km) east of Belfast, on the Ards Peninsula. It is in the civil parish of Newtownards and the historic baron ...

, Portaferry and

Strangford Strangford (from Old Norse ''Strangr fjörðr'', meaning "strong sea-inlet") is a small village at the mouth of Strangford Lough, on the Lecale peninsula in County Down, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 475 at the 2001 Census. On the ...

. The latter two straddle either shore of the narrow Strangford channel, and are connected by a car ferry.

Name

The name ''Strangford'' comes . The

Vikings Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

were active in the area during the Middle Ages. Originally, this name referred only to the narrow channel linking the lough to the sea (between the villages of

and Portaferry). Up until about the 18th century, the main body of the lough was better known by the (older) Irish name ''Loch Cuan'', meaning "loch of the bays/havens". This name was anglicized as ''Lough Coan'', ''Lough Cone'', ''Lough Coyn'', ''Lough Coin'', or similar. The narrow channel may have been known in Latin as the ''fretum Brene''. In Ulster-Scots the lough's name is spelt ''Strangfurd'' or ''Strangfirt Loch''.

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

's ''

Geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...

'' (2nd century AD) described a point called Ουινδεριος (''Winderios'', "pleasant river") which may have referred to Strangford Lough.

Geology

The loch was formed at the end of the last ice age and is generally under deep, but can reach in parts, generally the centre channel.

Flora

Flowering plants

Common cord-grass ('' Spartina anglica'') C.E. Hubbard was introduced in the mid-1940s is now abundant.

Algae

Maerl Maerl (also rhodolith) is a collective name for non-geniculate coralline red algae with a certain growth habit. Maerl grows at a rate of c. 1 mm per year. It accumulates as unattached particles and forms extensive beds in suitable sublitt ...

is a calcareous deposit, in the main, of two species, of

calcareous Calcareous () is an adjective meaning "mostly or partly composed of calcium carbonate", in other words, containing lime or being chalky. The term is used in a wide variety of scientific disciplines. In zoology ''Calcareous'' is used as an ad ...

algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular micr ...

''Phymatolithon calcareum'' and ''Lithothamnion glaciale'' which form free-living beds of unattached, branched corallines, living or dead, in Strangford Lough. The rocky and boulder shores toward the south of the lough are dominated by the seaweed knotted wrack '' Ascophyllum nodosum''. The usual zonation of weeds on these shore is, at the top channel wrack ('' Pelvetia canaliculata'' (L.) Dcne. et Rhur.), followed by spiral wrack (''

Fucus spiralis ''Fucus spiralis'' is a species of seaweed, a brown alga (Heterokontophyta, Phaeophyceae), living on the littoral shore of the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America. It has the common names of spiral wrack and flat wrack. Description ''Fu ...

'' L.), then knotted wrack (''Ascophyllum nodosum'' (L.) Le Jol) with some admixture of bladder wrack ('' Fucus vesiculosus'') L. and then serrated wrack ('' Fucus serratus'' L.) before coming to the low water kelps. Other algae include:

Fauna

Strangford Lough and Islands is an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Inte ...

. Strangford Lough is an important winter migration destination for many wading and sea

birds Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

Animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage ...

s commonly found in the lough include common seals, basking sharks and

brent geese The brant or brent goose (''Branta bernicla'') is a small goose of the genus ''Branta''. There are three subspecies, all of which winter along temperate-zone sea-coasts and breed on the high-Arctic tundra. The Brent oilfield was named after ...

. Three quarters of the world population of pale bellied brent geese spend winter in the lough area. Often the numbers are up to 15,000. The

Castle Espie Castle Espie is a wetland reserve managed by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) on the banks of Strangford Lough, three miles south of Comber, County Down, Northern Ireland, in the townland of the same name. It is part of the Strangford Lo ...

wetland reserve sits on the banks of the lough near

. The invasive carpet sea squirt, '' Didemnum vexillum'', was found in the Lough in 2012.

Tidal electricity

In 2007 Strangford Lough became home to the world's first commercial tidal stream power station,

SeaGen SeaGen was the world's first large scale commercial tidal stream generator. It was four times more powerful than any other tidal stream generator in the world at the time of installation. It was successfully decommissioned by SIMEC Atlant ...

. The 1.2

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...

underwater tidal electricity generator, part of Northern Ireland's Environment and Renewable Energy Fund scheme, took advantage of the fast tidal flow in the lough which can be up to 4 m/s. Although the generator was powerful enough to power up to a thousand homes, the

turbine A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating ...

had a minimal environmental impact, as it was almost entirely submerged, and the rotors turned slowly enough that they pose no danger to

wildlife Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted ...

. In 2008 a tidal energy device called

Evopod Evopod is a unique tidal energy device being developed by a UK-based company Oceanflow Energy Ltd for generating electricity from tidal streams and ocean currents. It can operate in exposed deep water sites where severe wind and waves also ma ...

was tested in Strangford Lough near the Portaferry Ferry landing. The device was a 1/10 scale prototype, monitored by

Queen's University Belfast , mottoeng = For so much, what shall we give back? , top_free_label = , top_free = , top_free_label1 = , top_free1 = , top_free_label2 = , top_free2 = , established = , closed = , type = Public research university , parent = ...

. The device was a semi-submerged floating tidal turbine, moored to the seabed via a buoy-mounted swivel. The scale device was not grid connected.

Sports

In July 2016, the Strangford Lough and Lecale Partnership, Scottish Coastal Rowing Association, Newry, Mourne and Down District Council and

Ards and North Down Borough Council Ards and North Down Borough Council is a local authority in Northern Ireland that was established on 1 April 2015. It replaced Ards Borough Council and North Down Borough Council. The first elections to the authority were on 22 May 2014 and it ...

hosted the "Skiffie Worlds 2016" rowing championships. The event was attended by 50 clubs from Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, The United States, Canada and Tasmania. Racing was held over a 2 km course on Strangford Lough at Delamont Country Park.

Ferry

The

Portaferry–Strangford ferry The Portaferry–Strangford ferry service crosses Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland at its narrowest point, close to where the lough joins the Irish Sea. The ferry links the two disconnected sections of the A2 road, Muff to Portaferry and St ...

service has linked Portaferry and

, at the mouth of the Lough, without a break and for almost four centuries. The alternative road journey is and takes about an hour and a half, while the ferry crosses the strait in 8 minutes. The subsidised public service carries both passengers and vehicles, and operates at a loss of more than £1m per year but is viewed as an important transport link to the Ards Peninsula.

References

External links

Strangford Lough OnlineJNCC

Selection {{Coord, 54.483, N, 5.583, W, display=title, type:waterbody_region:GB-NIR_source:dewiki Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in County Down Important Bird Areas of Northern Ireland Special Protection Areas in Northern Ireland Special Areas of Conservation in County Down Portaferry

Newtownards Marine reserves of Northern Ireland Ramsar sites in Northern Ireland Landforms of County Down Inlets of Northern Ireland