To give today’s incident a little perspective, since the IWDG was established almost 35 years ago, we’ve documented 5,856 sightings of our smallest baleen whale, the minke, 2,111 sightings of our largest and fastest coastal whale, the mighty fin whale, and 1,705 records and counting, of our most charismatic whale, the humpback. All these big numbers reflect the fact that these rorqual whales do most of their feeding in inshore waters and hence we get to see them with some regularity.
All 27 sperm whale sightings since 1990 courtesy IWDG
The sperm whale, the largest of the odontocetes or toothed whales, in sharp contrast isn’t so much a rare species, rather they are rarely seen, reflecting their habitat preference for deep canyon systems off the Continental Shelf Edge, where they think nothing of deep dives of 1-2 hours, taking them to depths of 2,000-3000 m. Such places are typically a long way offshore, (unless you live on Mayo’s, Mullet Peninsula), and so from the Irish south coast, you’d need to motor offshore at a good clip for some 8-10 hours before you’d find yourself in the zone and even then you’ve got your work cut out for you; as despite their being very audible with the right listening equipment (hydrophone) and easy to detect acoustically, sperm whales are notoriously difficult to detect visually, as let’s face it, they spend a lot more time at the bottom feeding on giant squid, than they do resting on the surface. The result is that we’ve only recorded sperm whales alive (as sightings) on a mere 27 occasions (see map).
Today was one such rare event, and these circumstances for good reason tend to bring out the pessimists in us, as experience tells us that sperm whales, at least healthy sperm whales are hardly ever recorded inshore, and sightings of them in a few metres of water in a place like Waterford Estuary, rarer still. So for good reason we go straight into “live stranding ” mode in preparation for the worst….not that there’s an awful lot that could be done to assist or refloat an adult sperm whale! Any care being of a palliative nature.
The one glimmer of hope we had today was a similar incident three years ago when on June 20th 2022 a sperm whale swam into Dursey Sound, west Cork and we waited for the inevitable news that it was grounded…. dying and dead. Alas, none of these things happened. It spent the day in the sound, then turned around and headed offshore, never to be seen again, dead or alive. We breathed a collective sigh of relieve as this was a bullet dodged. Today, it seems, we dodged another.
Earlier in the morning near Broomhill Pt. © Sorcha Maguire
The initial sightings report from Sorcha Maguire places the sperm whale in the estuary around 08:30am today, Tues. 25th March and this is the chronology of events as best we can piece them together
08:24 Logging and swimming near Broomhill point.
09:25 swimming west towards Passage east, then changed heading back towards the north side of the shipping channel close to Duncannon.
11:20 listing to one side close to Arthurstown pier, fishing vessel and kayak very close to whale.
13:11 Paddy Roche, ferryman …says whale still has water under it
14:00 big concern as reaching high tide now and if it remains where it is now, it will strand on falling tide.
15:00 Seems to be leaving the estuary with the falling tide. Fingers crossed.
16:00 IWDG Wexford & Cork members scope it from both Hook lighthouse and Dunmore East leaving the estuary.
16:30 our last report was from Brendan Glody, which puts it travelling at speed in a southwest direction about 1.5 miles south of Red Head on the Waterford side of the estuary entrance.
Arthurstown on the Wexford side around mid day 25/03/2025 © Damien Burke
Arthurstown @ 13:00 25/03/2025 © Sarah-Kim Watchorn
And that is pretty much as much as we can share with you at this stage. If it continues travelling in a southwest direction, it should be out of sight tomorrow and as with the Dursey animal that will be it. However, there is another scenario from this very area we can draw on. On August 18th 2011 a sperm whale was recorded close inshore at Ballyteige Bay, Co. Wexford. The following day it had travelled west along 70 km of the Waterford coast before live-stranding on the Cunningar Spit near Dungarvan, where it finally died the following day (#3) at 04:00 am. Our man in Waterford, Andrew Malcolm still suffers from PTSD from this incident!
If our whale today opts to hug the coastline, then the Cunningar spit, could very well live up to its reputation as a natural navigational risk to already disorientated or weakened whales. The sperm whales’ echolocation capacities are adapted for vertical movements through the deep-water column and not for tracking along our shallow coastline, where it is in effect “swimming blind”. But its actions today suggest that it has the vitality and good sense to leave the estuary on the falling tide, which augurs well for further obstacles it may encounter in the days ahead.
As always, we’d ask members of the public to report any sightings of this whale (or others) to IWDG on www.iwdg.ie and if you are inclined to see the oceans top apex predator, then consider doing so from land…..Waterford has some wonderful elevated Atlantic promontories to whale watch from. If you happen to encounter it on a boat (or any craft), please be mindful that sperm whales, as with all whale species are protected from wilful interference and our suggestion would be that you’d maintain a minimum distance of 100 m and not spend longer than 15 minutes with it. Remember, this whale is not in its natural environment and is likely to be stressed or unwell and we ask that you give it space, both for its and your own safety.
IWDG would like to acknowledge the following among those who assisted in the reporting & recording of this incident: Sorcha Maguire, Paddy Roche, Stephen Burke, Deirdre Slevin, Maureen Jackson, Damien Burke, Sarah-Kim Watchorn, Local RNLI and Harbour Master.
Postscript.…..there have been no follow up sightings of this sperm whale over the past three days (26th-Fri. 28th March) since it left Waterford Estuary on the afternoon of Tues. 25th. This can only be interpreted as good news, as a whale of this size is unlikely to go unnoticed if it stranded on a local beach, (dead or alive). Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
By Pádraig Whooley
IWDG Sightings officer
