The Dingle Peninsula, in County Kerry, is the northernmost of the series of peninsulas which form Ireland's southwest coast. Underlying the mountainous spine of the Corca Dhuibhne, the Dingle Peninsula contains a stony core of rock of at least 410 million years to the Silurian Period of the Palaeozoic Era. Geologic evidence shows the presence of a shallow sea where small colonial corals, brachiopods, and trilobites lived on a soft bottom of fine sand and mud. Nearby, active volcanoes periodically blanketed the region with fine deposits of volcanic ash and an occasional lava flow.

 Currently, sand beaches occur at the landward extremity of deep bays and are bounded by steep cliffs. The combination creates a rugged coastline exposed to the North Atlantic wind and wave climate. A representative pocket beach and rocky headland is shown above. The morphodynamics of the beach are classified as dissipative to intermediate, and the shiny appearance with laminar flow on the flat beachface demonstrates a high groundwater table. (Photograph taken May 2013 by Nick Dormer, Allen Press, Inc., Lawrence, Kansas, U.S.A. and caption by Chris Makowski, Coastal Education and Research Foundation [CERF], Coconut Creek, Florida, U.S.A.).