Our 2023 Irish humpback whale season produced a tally of 134 sighting records. At time of writing in early February 2025, we’ve received an almost identical tally of sighting records (n=133 see map right). It’s reasonable to assume that at this stage most of our humpbacks have either commenced or are about to depart on
Introduction Looking for a weekend with a difference? Why not join the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) www.iwdg.ie, Ireland’s leading marine conservation NGO, on a weekend whale-watching course in West Cork during summer 2025. In taking part, you will also be actively supporting whale and dolphin conservation and research in Ireland. Our 2025 residential
The recent humpback whale sighting in the Shannon Estuary caused quite a lot of excitement both inside the IWDG office and with the public. People traveled from all over Clare and beyond with their binoculars to see our new neighbor. The IWDG used their RIB to collect as much information as possible, including length and
13 December 2024 The IWDG team from the IWDG Head Office in Kilrush spent the afternoon trying to get a fluke shot of the whale to see if it has been recorded in Irish waters before it entered the Shannon Estuary. We tried to obtain a fluke shot which carries a unique pattern which can
When we go silent on humpback whales, it’s usually not what you’re thinking. So rather than there being few sightings, we are far more likely to be busy, either on the water gathering the evidence, or in my case frustratingly staring at the screen trying to put some order on who is seeing what, where
Report update, August 20th, 2024 A month after the initial sighting a message was posted on the IWDG Facebook page from a Liam McKay, a US visitor from Massachusetts, telling us that on August 13th he watched a whale from the shore in the bay between Lower Cruit Island and Arranmore, Co. Donegal, at a
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
They say a picture paints a thousand words and I’d probably not have looked into this subject had it not been for an image attached to a sighting report by IWDG Cork member and ecologist Conor Rowlands, taken from Cloghna Head, overlooking Rosscarbery Bay on June 3rd. During this watch Conor observed about four minkes
For those of you in the northwest who can’t easily make it down to West Cork for IWDG’s summer series of whale watching courses, this one-day free event should be of interest. Pitched at a range of levels, from the enthusiast with a passing interest in marine wildife, to existing whale watchers who’d like to
Now in their 3rd year, IWDG has just delivered the first of this season’s residential weekend whale watching courses at the CECAS Ctr. In Leap, west Cork. A pretty dire weather outlook for much of the weekend left us with a few challenges for the Saturday in particular, but it’s clear that this venue and