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.
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| 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!
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| Photo by Anneli Englund |
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| 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!
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