Blessed with light winds, calm seas and blue skies, this 2nd weekend whale watching course on Cape Clear Island was always going to produce good results.
Fri. 8th: the Ferry from Baltimore across to Cape produced the 1st sightings as we had good views of c3 Harbour porpoise in Roaringwater Bay.
Fri. 8th: 1st land watch from Bullig Point 17:10- 18:15 surprisingly produced no sightings.
Sat. 9th: 2nd land watch from Bullig Point 10:45-12:30 produced very close views of 5-8 harbour porpoise and a minimum of 1-2 minke whales, one of which swam across the mouth of south Harbour, and was clearly visible by all participants, without optics.
Sat. 9th Pelagic boat-trip with Nic Slocum on MV Voyager at 16:15-19:15 produced 1 minke whale which surfaced twice within 250 m of the boat. Well done to Peter Howard for winning the Mars bar on this one! While moving back towards the Gaiscanaun Sound we picked up a large group of c20-25 bottlenose dolphins who stayed with the boat for c90 minutes, and this not surprisingly turned out to be the highlight of the weekend for all on board. Bottlenose dolphins have been observed in the past few weeks around West Cork, and it should be noted that this species is not frequently seen in this area.
Sun. 10th: 10:00-11:30, the final land watch of the weekend from Bullig Point produced a further 6-8 harbour porpoises, some of which were actually inside South Harbour and could be seen clearly under the water.
Sun. 11th: 13:00-13:40, the return ferry to Baltimore produced a further sighting of c2 harbour porpoises, which were almost certainly a mother and calf pair.
What a wonderful weekend for all these participants, none of whom had ever previously seen a whale in Irish waters!
This augurs well for the 3rd and final whale watching course of the year on Cape Clear Island on Fri 5th– Sun 7th Aug, for which there are still a few places left. If interested please contact the IWDG on padraig.whooley@iwdg.ie or phone us on 023-31911. More information is available on the events section of our website.