For the first eight years of the Irish humpback whale catalogue, a map of their known movements would have been pretty uninteresting as it probably wouldn’t of extended much beyond a 100 mile box along the Irish Celtic Sea area. Then an international breakthrough in Sept. 2007 with Conor Ryan’s image of #HBIRL07 (NAHWC #04790)
In the summer of 1992 a dilapidated cottage near the southern tip of Dursey Island, on rugged Beara Peninsula, was purchased by a remarkable couple, Derek and Joanna Scott (below). They renovated it and over the next 30 years, it morphed into so much more than a home. “Scott’s Place” as it was known, became
During November IWDG hardly received a single whale sighting record……in fact an attempt at mapping all whale sightings for the first half of the month results in zero sightings and a completely blank map. What is odd is that November is historically a really good time, if not the best time, for large whale sightings
IWDG establish Fin Whale Photo-Identification Catalogue Remember fin whales? Yes, these are the large whales that really kick started the IWDG’s Whale Track, or the “Large whale Project” as it was known some 20 years ago. It’s so easy to forget with so much of the emphasis in recent times on humpbacks, that fin whales
We should continually reassess our understanding of how large whales such as humpbacks use Irish waters; it’s cathartic and serves to remind us that nothing remains the same and the natural world is no different, as it oscillates between constant flux and chaos. So when there is a flurry of humpback whale sightings in the
Pádraig Whooley, IWDG sightings officer examines the recent rare sperm whale sighting in Dursey Sound, Co. Cork. Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales and were the species portrayed as the villain of the piece in Herman Melville’s classic novel “Moby Dick“. I’ve seen sperm whales several times in Irish waters, but they’ve almost
This humpback whale of unknown gender, known to IWDG as # HBIRL77 was first recorded off Inis Oirr, Aran Islands, Co. Galway, by divers on 27th Aug. 2016. He/she has been photo identified every year since, with re-sightings on 22 dates over the past 7 years; most of which are from the known Irish Southwest
White whales are for some, the most mythical of creatures; they are the Holy Grail of whale watching. For the very few fortunate enough to witness such a rarely seen animal, it’s likely to be a transformative experience. So what do we know of this anonymously pigmented or leucistic humpback whale? Well to start with,
Our first international humpback match dates back to an image taken by Conor Ryan in September 2007 out on a whale watch trip with Colin Barnes off Toe Head, West Cork. Within a few hours of our posting the images on www.iwdg.ie of its well-marked dorsal fin there was an excited call from a Wouter
Report IV, Walrus update 20th Sept. 2021 IWDG have just heard of a walrus sighting yesterday Sunday 19th Sept. 2021 in Höfn, Hornafjörður, southeast Iceland and the images suggest that this is likely to be the same walrus aka “Wally” that was last seen in Crookhaven, West Cork on August 30th. We are awaiting further