Common Dolpin (c) Paddy O'Dwyer - IWDG
Well its finally done, I’ve been looking over the figures
and all in all it seems like the whole
endeavour was a success. I suppose
seeing 1,302 dolphins, 116 porpoises, 79 whales and 19 basking sharks isn’t bad
for one summer.
(c) Nick Massett - IWDG
The highlight of the whole bursary was on the 28th
of July when we came across a humpback feeding with a dozen minkes and hundreds
of common dolphins. Other sightings of note were the bottlenose dolphins, we encountered
the same group three times and also the rissos dolphins we encountered at the start
and twice at the end of the bursary. However every day was enjoyable and
presented different challenges. Marine Eco Tours have a great team that were very
knowledgeable and were a pleasure to work with. It was very interesting talking
to people on the tours and finding out what they did and didn’t know about the cetaceans
in Irelands waters. While some knew a great deal others didn’t know much at all,
but everyone was keen to learn more.
Basking Shark (c) Paddy O'Dwyer - IWDG
The study started on June 8th and finished
September the 6th. Starting
at the most basic I made it out on 43 separate days over the summer, July was
the month with the most days 19 or 44% of all days. This is hardly surprising
given the fine weather we had for most of July. A break down for the other
months goes June 10 days, August 11 days and September 3 days. In terms of
sightings I recorded sightings on 37 of the 43 days an 86% success rate not bad
considering the range of conditions we were out in. There was a total of 18
days where sea state was recorded as 4 or more for some part of the day which
is hardly ideal. 72% of all sighting occurred in sea state 2 or less with 96%
of sightings occurring in sea state 3 or less.
Minke Whale (c) Paddy O'Dwyer - IWDG
Saturday the 20 of July was the day that
produced the most sightings with 11. The most common month for sightings was
July with 93 sightings or 54% of the total sightings, this is hardly surprising
given that we were out on more days. However there was a clear difference
between June and August despite getting out on more days in August there were
far less sightings than in June. June had 50 or 29% of sightings while August had
23 or 13% of sightings, September produced 6 sightings not bad for only 3 days.
Rissos Dolpin (c) Paddy O'Dwyer - IWDG
The most commonly sighted species was unsurprisingly the
harbour porpoise with 42% of all sightings, this was followed by minke whales
29% and common dolphins 18%. However when it comes to the numbers sighted for
each species the common dolphins win by a landslide with 81% of the total animals
seen. This is mainly due to a few days where there hundreds of them in the bay. Even the
harbour porpoises the most frequently seen animal could only manage 8% of the
individual animals seen. Aside from all this I managed to capture id shots of
bottlenose dolphins, rissos dolphins a minke whale and basking sharks.
I’ve included
the table below as a breakdown of sightings over the project. I’m currently working
up the report and should be able to put up some distribution maps next week as
well as any addition information that I’ve probably left out.
Bottlenosed Dolpin (c) Paddy O'Dwyer - IWDG
Again I’d like to thank the Irish whale and Dolphin Group
for the opportunity, Simon, Joanne and Nick for all their support and Mick, Britta and Billy from Marine Eco Tours who made it a productive and enjoyable
summer.
| Speceis | Sightings | No of individuals | Group range | June | July | August | September |
| Bottlenose dolphins | 3 | 40 | 20-8 | - | - | 3 | - |
| Common Dolphin | 31 | 1230 | 300-5 | 1 | 18 | 11 | 1 |
| Humpback Whale | 1 | 1 | 1-1 | 1 | - | - | |
| Harbour porpoise | 73 | 116 | 5-1 | 21 | 41 | 9 | 2 |
| Minke whale | 50 | 78 | 12-1 | 22 | 27 | 0 | 1 |
| Rissos Dolphin | 3 | 32 | 12-8 | 1 | - | - | 2 |
| Basking Shark | 11 | 19 | 5-1 | 5 | 6 | - | - |
| Total | 172 | 1516 | - | 50 | 93 | 23 | 6 |
