I meant to mention this earlier… there is a free one-hour lecture every Wednesday evening during May in the Galway Aquarium (details here). The first one was on last week (and more on that anon) and the next one is on tonight. Naturally, each lecture has a maritime theme, but the real difficulty is resisting the great smell coming from the Chinese restaurant located on the floor above the Aquarium (not sure if they have fish on the menu).
Picture above of Silver Strand (part of this timelapse video)