Obituary: Matt Murphy, founder of the Sherkin Island Marine Research Station who was a passionate environmentalist and inspired many scientists

Although he had no academic background, he facilitated the collection of 40 years of invaluable coastal baseline data, including Ireland’s most extensive phytoplankton monitoring programme.

His own recording of Sherkin Island’s rainfall for Met Éireann from July 1972 — and other weather data from 1974 — continued until the week before he died.

He was born in Cork city on May 21, 1934, and was one of two sons reared on St John’s Terrace. He recounted how there were three religions at home — Catholicism, hockey and rugby, as both his father and brother, Noel, played for Ireland.

Summers spent on his cousin’s farm near Kanturk inculcated a love of the outdoors, and he was inspired by his mother’s story of how her father built a canoe for her. He bought his first canoe in Cobh in 1954 and began running kayaking trips on the River Lee.

He took a job at Dunlops in Cork in 1958, and his first date with Eileen O’Sullivan, who he met at work, was in a kayak. They married in 1962, and he left Dunlops at the age of 28 in May 1963 and the couple had their eldest child, Matty, that November.

They moved to Rathcoole, Co Cork, close to the Blackwater River, where they ran canoe and camping holidays. In 1965, they started a horse-drawn caravan business with Murphy building over 20 of some 70 caravans.

In all, the couple started nine businesses, including a Kosangas dealership, a pig enterprise, a pony-trekking business, an adventure centre and a timber extraction business which ran into financial trouble in 1970.

As Murphy recorded, “we lost everything except our home and 15 acres on Sherkin, so we decided to move there in 1971 to concentrate on our adventure centre”.

The last two of the couple’s seven children were born on the island. In 1973, Eileen was diagnosed with cancer and was given only a few weeks to live, but she lived another six years and died in January 1979.

Two years beforehand, the couple had opened a privately-funded marine research station. Murphy said it was inspired by a course Jenny Baker had given that June on oil pollution which included a survey on the island by University College Cork students.

The first laboratory was built in 1976 in time for a visit by students from Bangor University in Wales, and the first groups also came from Swansea, the University of Amsterdam and the British Natural History Museum.

The adventure centre helped to finance the marine station, but it closed in 1990 when insurance premiums became too high. The marine station was also closed to the public, but continued its work and expanded.

Almost 600 volunteers, nicknamed ‘Bods’, spent time there over a period of 40 years when the centre built up a library of some 100,000 books, journals, reports and reprints along with an herbarium of plants and seaweeds.

Former volunteer Dave Wall recalled in a tribute on behalf of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group that the station “gave hundreds of marine biology graduates, from Ireland and overseas, their first start”.

Cork scientist Dr Val Cummins, also a former ‘Bod’, recalled how he offered the volunteers pocket money of £10 for the week, but gave us so much more than that. “In my case, he gave me an extraordinary head start in the world of marine science. That summer, he opened the door to a world of enduring friendships and memories to be created over the subsequent three decades with the Sherkin community,” she said in an online tribute.

Murphy said the centre’s main aim was to establish baseline data on marine life, record the natural changes in the plant and animal communities, and raise awareness about Ireland’s rich marine environment and potential for employment.

In July 1993, he was appointed to the board of the newly established Marine Institute, but resigned later that year, claiming it was “spending more on its image than on research”.

Over the years, the Sherkin station ran educational programmes, environmental conferences, published books and newsletters on marine biology, and won many awards. Its two largest and longest-running projects were the Rocky Shore Survey and the Phytoplankton Monitoring Programme.

Murphy’s family were central to the centre’s success, and were his “greatest legacy”, according to his daughter Audrey, who spoke at his funeral.

She recalled how her older sister Susan worked on publications and programmes, and how they were all involved in everything from milking cows to changing beds to driving boats.

President Michael D Higgins said through the pioneering work of the Murphy family, whole generations learned the importance of the sea, the emerging ecological crisis and respect for nature.

Matt Murphy is survived by his children Matty, Michael, Susan, Mark, Robbie, Peter and Audrey, his brother Noel, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and extended family.