Most of our monthly Effort Watches for April from throughout all Irish waters have been carried out by our regular watch teams. These regular montly watches in our inshore waters form a central plank of our monitoring commitment to NPWS under ISCOPE II. These watches provide an important “baseline” which are essential in
establishing key habitats for cetaceans occuring in our inshore waters.
The results of 10 watches in all Irish waters suggest that activity is quite low right now on the blubber front. This is as we’d expect as Spring time is considered to be a quiet time of the year; as inshore waters slowly begin to warm up and productivity builds.
Most sites watched either drew a blank or produced low numbers of Harbour porpoises. But Mick O’ Connell did observe a minke whale off Slea Head, Co. Kerry, which is the 2nd Minke whale sighting at this site in the past 2 weeks.
Staying in “the Kingdom”, there has been consistent bottlenose dolphin activity in the Valentia Island/Cahirciveen area of Kerry this week, with multiple sightings from IWDG member Rosemary Hill from the local Island ferry. We gather from another IWDG member Franz Schenk that they are still in the area 5/04/08
Photo above 03/04/08 by Barry Macaulay, Skipper of MV Atlantic Explorer , www.kerrymarinetours.com
The very latest cetacean sighting from all Irish waters are available on www.iwdg.ie.
Pádraig Whooley
IWDG Sightings Co-ordinator