In managing a public biological recording scheme, we are in effect sampling. So the records that you as Citizen Scientists report to IWDG are likely a small subset of the total number of sightings of cetaceans and basking sharks from all Irish coastal waters, and this is a situation that we are happy to live with. As if every sighting was reported to IWDG through the regular channels (IWDG website and Reporting App), I’d be sunk in jig time. But recording everything is simply not possible for a small charity. That said, it would be a nice problem to have!
So the question is always whether the number of sighting reports IWDG receives is sufficient to accurately reflect what’s out there? I believe it is, then again I hear you say…. “you would, wouldn’t you!” But this has always been more a qualitative, than a quantitative exercise, and I’m reminded continually of the general principle that “quantity begets quality”, put another way, quantity has a quality all of its own.
So when I reflect on the summer so far, you’d have to say that it’s been pretty quiet. In fact, some previous hotspots have been alarmingly quiet, with whale watch operators in former hotspots such as in west Cork, struggling to find any whales of any species on most trips since Jun
HBIRL128, off South harbour, Cape Clear 7th July 2024 © M. Cottrell, Baltimore Sea Safari
e. We’ve just had our busiest basking shark season ever, but this somehow never transcended higher up the food chain to whales and dolphins. Well, not till this week anyway.
On July 7th, West Cork finally produced another humpback whale south of Cape Clear, which Micheal Cottrell of Baltimore Sea Safari described as a small specimen of C7mts that was travelling west at speed towards the Fastnet in challenging sea conditions. But the fluke image secured suggests this is likely to be the same individual filmed by drone off nearby Toe Head on June 2nd. This individual appears to be missing the left tip of its tail fluke, making it an animal that should be easy to recognise in the season and years ahead. It will be allocated to the Irish Humpback whale catalogue as #HBIRL128.
The following day July 8th on the opposite end of the country, our friends at the RSPB Westlight Ctr on Rathlin island were enjoying a run of minke activity and among the reports sent to us by Daisy-May Harris was a series of images, one of which caught my attention as it looked simply too big and had an impressive blow of greater than 6-7mts, which isn’t something we’d expect from a minke. So on receiving further images at higher resolution and sharing them with colleagues, we reached a consensus that this was indeed a fin whale Balaenoptera physalus, feeding in close proximity to at least one other minke off Bull Point. This is an important record, not just for Rathlin Island, not even for Co. Antrim, but it’s way bigger than this, as it is the first validated record of a fin whale for Northern Ireland. This is of course not to say that fin whales have never occurred in Northern Irish waters before, rather they’ve never been seen, reported and validated in the Provence. So, this is a big week for biological recording in Northern Ireland and it’ll be interesting to see with the genie now out of the bottle, whether we get further sightings of the Greyhound of the Sea from the North coast. This development is entirely consistent with what IWDG have been saying for some time now…..our large whales are pushing further up the west coast and it was only a matter of time before some of them rounded the corner at Malin Head and drifted east. We live in interesting times!
Fin whale feeding off Rathlin Isl. July 8th. A 1st for Antrim and N. Irl. © Daisy May Harris
Two days later on July 10th our focus shifted back south to Kerry with 2-3 humpbacks off the Skelligs and another large baleen whale in Ballinskelligs Bay the same day, but excitement levels ramped up considerably in the afternoon with confirmation that the killer whale/Orca duo of John Coe and Aquarius from the Scottish West Coast Community Group were swimming though the Blasket islands. The remarkable thing about this sighting is that it is exactly one year to the day since this remnant pair of old bulls were recorded in the area, when they were photographed off the Fahan area of Slea Head by Michael Fagan on July 10th 2023. They are it seems, like their larger rorqual relatives, creatures of habit. I wonder what sort of odds Paddy Power might give us on their showing up in Dingle Bay on 10th July 2025?
Humpback off Skelligs July 10th © Brian Power
Killer whales, John Coe (right) & Aquarius off Slea Hd July 10th 2023 © Michael Fagan
Hopefully with so much poor weather thus far this summer, we can look forward to a little more high pressure, which widens the gap between those isobars and allows more settled weather to build. All of which means good whale watching conditions, which will hopefully translate into some great encounters and sightings being reported to IWDG.
Finally, it was wonderful to meet so many Mayo members last weekend for our one-day whale watching/recording course which was arranged by local IWDG member and ecologist Siún Ni Cheallaigh, with funding support from NPWS. Big thanks to the staff at Bessies bar in Kilcummin for facilitating us and to Angela for her catering and photography input as well as Gemma O’ Connor and Tom Breathnach for support on the day. If this event encourages even one person to carry out regular “effort watches” from Co. Mayo or Sligo, it’ll have been well worth the drive up. Remember, it’s a qualitative exercise!
Attendees and local IWDG Mayo members at last weekend’s whale watching course in Kilcummin, Killala Bay, Co. Mayo © Angela O’ Kelly
By Pádraig Whooley
IWDG Sightings Officer