Yearly Archives: 2006

The European Union and Mauritania reached agreement on Saturday on a new fisheries partnership that will give EU vessels access to the African nation’s fish stocks for another six years.

The dead whale was reported washed up at Baile na hAbhainn, Inverin in Galway Bay by Rory Thynne. After an email to IWDG Galway members, Joanne O’Brien, visited the site to confirm it was a male humpback whale calf. The whale was in good condition with most of its skin intact. At 6.0m long the

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On Friday 14 July, a juvenile humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) was spotted breaching in Dingle Bay by Jonathan Smith, a researcher/cameraman with the BBC natural history unit. Jonathan had been watching bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) near Inch strand when he spotted a larger animal further out in the bay. A number of IWDG members went

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Member governments must hit fishing vessels that persistently break European Union rules with much higher fines if financial penalties are to be any deterrent, the European Commission said on Friday.

The IWDG have just published a new book entitled “A Guide to the Identification of the Whales and Dolphin of Ireland”. The guide was officially launched by Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe, Director of the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Illegal fishing has devastated Europe’s stocks of the highly prized bluefin tuna and threatens the species’ survival in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, environmental campaign group WWF said on Wednesday.

Europe plans to change tack in the way it tries to curb overfishing and boost numbers of species such as cod, depleted after years of quota-busting by EU fleets, the European Commission said on Wednesday.