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Portaferry () is a village in County Down, Northern Ireland, at the southern end of the Ards Peninsula, near the Narrows at the entrance to Strangford Lough. It is home to the Exploris aquarium and is well known for the annual Gala Week Float Parade. It hosts its own small Marina, the Portaferry Marina. The Portaferry–Strangford ferry service operates daily at 30-minute intervals (7.45 am to 10.45 pm) between the villages of Portaferry and Strangford, less than 1500 metres apart, conveying about 500,000 passengers per annum. It had a population of 2,514 people in the 2011 Census. The village is located within the Barony of
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Pot fishing, mainly for prawns and crabs and licensed shellfish farming takes place within Strangford Lough. Queen's University of Belfast Marine Laboratory have a Marine Research Laboratory on the shorefront. The village is also home to a research centre for Swedish tidal-kite developer Minesto. The lough is one of the world's most important marine sites with over 2,000 marine species.
There are fine Georgian buildings in the village square, including a Market House, now used as a community centre.
Portaferry Lifeboat is an essential lifeline for local fishermen and yachtsmen. The Atlantic 75 is the fastest seagoing lifeboat in the RNLI's fleet and is capable of speeds up to 34 knots. Culture Northern Ireland – Portaferry Lifeboat Station
It is Northern Ireland's first Marine Nature Reserve and is renowned as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Special Scientific Interest, with six National Nature Reserves within its reaches. Over 2000 species of marine animals have been found in the lough and internationally important flocks of wildfowl and wading birds converge there in winter. The lough is also the most important site in Ireland for breeding common seals.
Other pursuits are sailing, coastal rowing, angling, wildfowling, and birdwatching. The town has the lough's longest established sailing club.
The lough is a centre for experimental marine current turbine technology development. Tidal energy, unlike wind or wave power, is a renewable energy resource which can be predicted. In 2008 a twin-rotor 1.2 MW SeaGen was installed and successfully demonstrated this technology until its decommissioning which began in 2017. Swedish company Minesto have tested various versions of their tidal-kite technology in the lough since 2011, and have a workshop and offices in Portaferry.
Portaferry played a part in the linen industry. Many of the women in the town were employed to embroider handkerchiefs for Thomas Somerset and Co. one of the major linen companies in Ireland. The company realised that the women were more productive in the summer due to the light, so installed the first electric light outside of Belfast in Ulster. Each house with a working woman was given one light fitting and bulb. There was also a bus service introduced to bring more women from the Ards Peninsula to Portaferry to work in the factory that Somerset built.
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