Monday, May 27, 2013

11th - 26th of May

11th – 26th of May

I arrived in Claddaghduff, Connemara, on the evening of the 11th of May. My husband Chris joined me for the first week while waiting for my research boat, a 6.5m rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RIB) to arrive so we could get on the water and start the work. During the first week in Connemara the weather was not on our side; it was way too windy to get out on the water. Besides it being too dangerous for the RIB to be in rough weather conditions with breaking waves and swell, it also makes research a lot harder to do because it is harder to spot the dolphins amongst the whitecaps and. It is also harder to take good photo-ID pictures when the boat is rocking and the light conditions are poor.


View to Kylemore Abbey, Connemara
The sceneries around the area are breath-taking and dominated by moors, mountains, rivers and lochs and we spent our time familiarizing ourselves with areas around Claddaghduff, Cleggan and Clifden as well as meeting people, having walks, swimming in the sea, climbing a mountain and establishing new contacts that might become useful for bottlenose dolphin sightings.

On Monday the 20th Chris went back home to Cork, and I finally got my research RIB and also a field assistant, Ruadhan, who is going to be the boat driver for the first two weeks of field work. Also the winds finally started to ease up a little, so we decided to do a survey on Tuesday hoping to see some dolphins. On Monday evening I had heard promising news from the Clare Island ferry (Pirate Queen) drivers Brian and Allen; apparently they had seen dolphins almost every day during the week so our timing seemed very good. We launched the boat from Killary harbour shortly after 9AM on Tuesday and headed out. After driving for only about an hour towards the islands and skerries couple of miles outside Killary mouth, we spotted something in the water that turned out to be dolphin dorsal fins! We estimated around 10-15 animals including at least one juvenile and managed to take some photo-ID pictures until we lost the animals when they were heading towards some dangerous looking rocks where we were unable to follow them. We managed to stay with the animals for about half an hour and get some photo-ID pictures so all in all it was very successful first day on the water!

I compared the pictures I took to the University College Cork catalogue and found two matches. One of the dolphins had been photographed near the mouth of Killary fjord twice before in 2009 and once in Broadhaven Bay, Mayo, in 2010. The other matched dolphin was sighted in Broadhaven Bay in 2010. This supports previous findings that these animals seem to be mobile and move up and down the coast unlike the more resident Shannon bottlenose dolphins.


Photo by Anneli Englund

The same bottlenose dolphin photographed in 2009 and 2013. The animal can be identified based on permanent markings (nicks and notches) on the dorsal fin. Photo by Milaja Nykanen


On Friday 24th, we decided to do a little survey launching from Cleggan Bay. We sailed around High Island and along the coasts of Inishark and Inishbofin but we didn’t see any dolphins, only seabirds including guillemots, black guillemots, kittiwakes and black-backed gulls.

On Saturday 25th, I received a text message from Vinny from Killary Cruises saying that they had seen dolphins in the mouth of Killary fjord, so we decided to head over despite the rainy weather. We launched the boat in the afternoon, and only after about 15min of driving we spotted four bottlenose dolphins in the fjord. One of them was a juvenile and he/she was interested in our boat and came to bowride. The others seemed to stay away possibly foraging in the incoming tide. After about 15 minutes, the dolphins regrouped and started heading towards the open sea and we lost them. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get any good photo-ID pictures of this group due to short time spent with the dolphins, them staying away from our boat and bad light conditions. We had another brief encounter with two dolphins further out at sea but then it was too rough to keep up with them.

Hopefully these sightings will continue, I can say that our first week on water has exceeded all my expectations!