Sound of silence better than jet skis

MAY the Lord protect us from jet skis, and from loudmouths with mobile phones in planes.

Close to swimmers or surfers, jet skis are intimidating and dangerous. Wherever they are used within earshot of the shore, the natural peace is shattered. Few sounds are more irritating and disruptive. For the preservation of the public right to peace, John Gormley, with the new environmental broom, should legislate for their control.

Some years ago I described the effect of a jet ski launched into a quiet west Cork bay on a summer Sunday afternoon. It was a ‘dead’ sort of day, the sea calm, the air still. A family walked their dog along the strand, a couple played hurling, some children swam in the sea. Peace lay settled upon the world about us. Then, a 4X4 arrived, and its owners unloaded and launched a jet ski. Within minutes it was a changed world.

“It fired, farted and filled the bay with a vicious snarl. It ploughed up the water, howled, bucked and spun. The rider, like a kid on a stunt bike, cut circles and figures of eight. The noise, like his bow wave, crashed upon the shore, climbed up the hillside, broke over the solitary houses, sluiced into our ears. It was all around us as we walked the green lanes. Its urgent whine, like a maniac chain saw, ended conversation, made the teeth grit, peeled the nerve ends raw. Every living thing within half a mile was at its mercy, assaulted by its violence. The fool that drove it waved to his shorebound mates. Some hero, him — what a feat, to ride a water motor-cycle over a surface like a duck pond! Never mind the skill of the sailor, the silent grace of the surf-boarder or wind-surfer; see the mighty water-skier ride his mighty water-bike!”

On that seashore, the sound wasn’t hemmed in by hills, but on a lake the racket of a jet ski is even more devastating. Where the skier ‘skis’ (if you can call it ‘skiing’), the legendary sound of “lake water lapping” is drowned out by his noise. Throughout the ages, people have enjoyed the sound of water. Many great poets have written about its music — Spenser’s “sweet Thames flow softy”, Masefield’s “call of the running tide”, Kavanagh’s canal water, “so stilly/ Greeny at the heart of summer” — and, of course, Handel famously orchestrated it.

But with the jet skier nearby we may forget all hope of enjoying water’s subtle voices. Jet skis are not for poets.

The angler, quietly casting his line from the shore, the fisherman in a punt, dapping with flies, the island colonies of nesting birds, all are thrown into consternation as the show-off on the jet ski whines past.

When I rowed on Lough Mask as a boy, some islands would seem to rise and move away as the newly-hatched chicks in the nests carpeting the ground heard the splash of the oars and crowded towards the furthest end. Imagine how the thousands of gulls, along with the terns, coots, waterhens and ducks that annually nest on Lough Mask, Conn and Corrib, respond to the shock-waves set up by a single individual on a jet ski.

Will the skier care about the chaos his noise creates in the world? From what I’ve seen, no. As the law stands, a solitary skier with his machine can ‘take over’ a bay and destroy its ambient peace for as long as he wants, as often as he wants.

Those whose amenity suffers — who may number hundreds — have no recourse.

Slow as I am to curtail anyone’s pleasure, I believe jet skis should be banned from waters where they will disturb wild life, or interfere with the ambient peace. Let them ski to their heart’s content half a mile out to sea, using a boat to carry them or tow them. If they can afford the machine, they can afford the boat.

Increasingly, resorts in Europe prohibit these machines within earshot of the shore. Surely Mr Gormley, who now has responsibility for our environment, should move to protect the right of the public and wild creatures to enjoy the ambient sounds of Irish seashore or lakeside, now at the mercy of those who can ride their noise-polluting ‘skis’ wherever and whenever they want.