Updated 9 April 2017 This year’s blue whiting acoustic survey began far off the Southwest coast on the Porcupine Bank. To get there we swapped the shelter of Galway Bay for the Atlantics growing swell, giving us a taste of the less than desirable forecast on the way. It took a day to reach the
Posts Categorized: News
Report II, Update 5th April 2017 Great news today from our MMO Officer, Patrick Lyne who has reported the first humpback whale of the 2017/18 whale season, with a single animal seen this afternoon tail-fluking from Crow Head, Beara Peninsula about 5 Km offshore, among large numbers of common dolphins. It seems that each year,
Four Common dolphins were stranded in Cloghane estuary at 11am on March 30th. Locals had noticed the four dolphins foraging as the tide was going out and it is quite common for individuals to be caught out by the quickly receeding tide in the area and so the alert was raised. Sure enough about 30
IWDG members are invited to attend our Strandings Network Meeting, which will include updates on strandings from around the country, the work of the tissue bank that the network feeds into, and coordination of the network for the coming year. It will also be a great opportunity to brush up on some of the finer
UPDATE 21 MARCH 2017 IWDG have received a letter from Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Heather Humphreys following our concern regarding increased strandings, especially of common dolphins. In the letter the Minister states that "the Department have a robust programme of scientific monitoring in place for all species including extensive offshore
Our Whale Tales and Dolphin evening at the Sweeney Culturlann Library, Kilkee, was a great success on Friday night. The evening included a series of talks and presentations on whales and dolphins from Irish inshore waters, highlighting the exceptional year for Humpback whale activity off the Clare coast. Unprecedented numbers of whales were recorded by
The IWDG will be at the Dive Ireland International Expo in Athlone this weekend, March 4th and 5th. Come visit our stand and find out about whale and dolphin ecology and biology, as well as the best places to see whales and dolphins around Ireland.
The IWDG is contracted by Dublin Port to deliver a Marine Mammal Mitigation Plan as part of the Alexandra Basin Re-Development. This plan involves monitoring of piling, dredging and dumping operations and long-term acoustic monitoring. The first phase of the long term acoustic monitorng using Static Acoustics (SAM) was enabled in December when CPODs were
On Jan 16th 2017 there was quite remarkable footage (below) and stills taken from Cork Harbour mouth which showed a pair of bottlenose dolphins attacking and presumably killing a harbour porpoise. These incidents are likely to be relatively common, but getting such compelling evidence is not. The event was documented and reported to IWDG by
The new Mammal Atlas published this week by the National Biodiversity Data Centre and National Parks and Wildlife Service is a huge achievement. Comiled over many years with the support of many organisations and individuals. The IWDG were key partners and are delighted to have been able to provide thousands of inshore and offshore cetacean