Irish Marine Life
inshore offshore play science coral-reefs crabs ag snámh news think imeachtaíArchive for Coastal
Phytoplankton Bloom, West Cork
We have been reading and re-reading this contribution, which we love, from Anthony Beese in Cork:
The fish seller in the English Market tells me about his amazing encounter with green lights on the strand at Inchydoney in West Cork. He was walking along the shore at 2 am on the morning of July 25th.
I am imprisoned by fairies for three nights and by sloth for three more, but on August 1st, Breda and I visit the strand at The Dock at Castlepark, Kinsale (formerly Jarley’s Cove) – a rocky cove filled with stoneless sand and a steep foreshore – artificially formed no doubt. Even in that sheltered place there are signs of the recent bloom. At the southern end of the strand, near rocks, the bioluminescence shows best, clinging it seems to small fragments of seaweed:
MOONFIRE (WATER FAIRIES)
We see
Lying under the last quarter of the moon,
Flickering lights at the edge of the slipping tide,
White sparks that run through a rocky gut,
And hints of blue and green
Suddenly lost in calms.
Dive in!
Irishmarinelife welcomes observations, questions and contributions of any kind….irishmarinelife@gmail.com
Basking Shark; Achill Island
After a pretty insane day of fishing, snorkelling, doing some kelp forest videoing for the Heritage Council’s ‘Heritage in Schools Scheme’ and exploring caves around pseudo-tropical Achill this Sunday, we had this surprise on the way home in the curragh.
The glassy seas country wide meant sightings shot up over the weekend around the country. check out the IWDG’s sightings page to see where and what was seen.
UPDATE - And from Wednesday´s Irish Times; record numbers of Basking Sharks were tagged over the same weekend off Malin Head, now considered a Basking Shark ‘hotspot’. Read the article here
Cantankerous crustaceans on the up in Clew Bay
The same weather dynamics that grounded thousands of planes this week launched more than a few boats in the West of Ireland. One of the features of a blocking high pressure in the North Atlantic is a consistent run of light northerly winds. To an aviation authority, this means a countrywide headache if there is an active volcano to your north, to a fisherman in Mayo, however, it means calm untroubled seas and a green light to spending long days on them.
Some modest currachs will be cleaned and outboards primed for evenings after mackerel starting in the next month or so, and the bigger trawlers do their thing over the horizon toward the Porcupine Bank, but it was a lobster boat that caught my eye last week.
Recovering pots it had laid a few days previously, it anchored over a shallow reef that hosts a breaking wave every other day in winter. Lobsters move into shallower waters from the deep at this time of year, but I had never seen a boat drop pots in a spot this shallow and close to the beach before.
A report by Bord Iascaigh Mhara in 2008 suggested lobster catches were declining nationwide, but not in this region; probably due to a successful V notching programme (cutting Vs into the tails of female lobsters indicating they are not to be taken). I wondered were nationwide trends catching up and forcing this fisherman into newer grounds or was he just trying to spread his efforts?
The future for lobster, the Marine Institute tell us, like for so many other species, will eventually be in aquaculture and restocking activities. Lobsters are notoriously troublesome to raise in captivity; they don’t breed well in artificial conditions, grow slowly and if they do survive, make exceptionally poor housemates, viciously attacking and often eating their fellow aquarium inhabitants and species.
Seamus Mac an Iomaire in the landmark ‘Shores of Connemara’, wrote of the lobster’s viciousness with other marine life and going ‘berserk’ when hungry, often stealing bait off fishermen; this hunger and skill of course eventually drawing him into the first of two pots (the second being in a kitchen somewhere).
However, years of trials in Clew Bay and The Killary Harbour finally delivered workable results last year. The scientists involved, who were from Norway, Ireland and Spain figured out the best way to work with the problematic crustaceans was to simply leave them alone. They left the juvenile lobsters to culture in oyster baskets, letting them feed on plankton in the surrounding water and whatever grew on the structure of the baskets.
The results were good and the scientists are confident that this will mean the ability to restock populations in the future. And more of any natural resource, that we own, is good for Mayo and good for Ireland right now.
80 Volunteers and 105 bags of rubbish equals clean beaches!
A lot of people who read Irishmarinlife live around Galway City, and love it because of its excellent and accessible coastline. This is a Press release from Galway Atlantaquaria about the clean up advertised here last week -
It was all Marine Madness on city beaches on Sunday with over 80 volunteers out in force to clean six coastal areas from Rinville to Silverstrand. Up to 105 bags of rubbish was removed as well as larger item such as a kitchen sink, fridge, mattress spring and various items of clothing. This was the largest voluntary beach clean ever undertaken in Ireland in one day and organisers were delighted with the turn out. Sharon Carroll from Galway City Council said ”Sunday’s Big Bay Clean was a huge success. To clear over 100 bags of litter from our coast is a great achievement and all the volunteers that took part should be commended for their efforts. Litter is a big problem in this country but initiatives such as this show that groups, businesses and individuals in Galway are willing to work together to keep our city clean.”
Scooby Doo was also on hand giving out poop scoops to dog walkers on the Promenade. Children will be given the opportunity to put some of the rubbish to use when they will be invited to make a Whale Collage at the forthcoming World Oceans Day Celebrations at the aquarium on May 30th.
The beach clean was organised by Galway City Council and Galway Atlantaquaria as part of Galway’s Marine Month of Madness which continues until the end of May, for more information contact the aquarium on 091 585100
Snorkel at An Spideal
New pictures – check out na griangrafanna on the right hand side of this page —-»
An Spideal yesterday evening kicked off the first snorkel of this year and try-out of my new underwater camera housing. A week of north winds (offshore in Spiddal) meant good visibility but water temperatures are still pretty chilly. Nothing too mind blowing was seen, the highlight was a colourful corkwing wrasse which lit up my snorkel with its neon hieroglyphic patterns. This fish reminds me of the Pacific giant hawkfish or hieroglyphic hawkfish, a fish which lit up snorkels in a different ocean once..
Living the Wildlife – Sea Trout
Colin Stafford Johnson is back with his excellent series ‘Living the Wildlife’ at 7 pm on tuesday evenings on RTE1. Its kicking off tonight videoing sea trout spawning in mountain streams in Kerry with locala cameramen James Pembroke and Vinny Hyland.
Sharks, Migrations and Vegetarians
Those excited by spring and eager for summer are impatient for the swallows at this point in the year, keenly broadcasting news of the first arrivals to whoever will listen. Leaving the country however this month with less fuss will be the fatter and more coastal migrant, the Brent Geese, a group of which I watched stalking the dropping tide at a sheltered estuary last week. Picking half leisurely between the mud and intertidal stones, they weren’t looking for worms, shellfish or other fleshy nutrition, but for the thin green leaves of Zostera, a seagrass which grows in such a place. If that isn’t to be found they direct their interest toward the also green and even thinner Ulva, a fast growing seaweed. In the latter half of the winter which they spend in Ireland, they often foray inland to flat coastal meadows, always in group numbers and always in search of something green to eat.
The group I saw couldn’t have long left in the country; Brent Geese spend spring and autumn in Iceland and summer in the high Canadian arctic, clocking up almost 3,000 miles along the way. Between the months of October and April though, groups of these vegetarians can be found at places like Dooniver in Achill and Rossport Bay (for the time being anyway).
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And not too far from Rossport off the Belmullet peninsula last week, the first recording this year of an equally impressive migrant was made, returning to Ireland in this case. Basking sharks have never had it so good. Fished, as we know to almost extinction in the first half of the century, they are now more likely to be pursued by a camera or a marine biologist wielding a spear with a tag on the end. Their television profile is growing; they were amongst the luminaries of RTE’s migrant documentary series, Wild Journeys, on Sunday nights and they have their own dedicated website www.baskingshark.ie. More is known about their migrating habits than ever before thanks to satellite tagging activity (we now know some travel to the other side of the Atlantic when not in Irish waters) and projects such as the Northwest Mayo project in collaboration with Meas Mara an Mhuirthead, and GMIT. Between now and July, Mayo has some of the best places in the country to see them, Achill always being the best, with sightings off the Erris coast too. Sightings of ‘whales’ jump in this time period; many are actually these sharks breaching. If you do see some, report it to baskingshark.ie, if the shark is tagged, your information is twice as precious and a photo will be very gratefully received.
This article appeared in The Mayo News edition 26 April 2010
The violence of our peaceful seas
Normal North Atlantic order has restored itself after a most remarkable 4 weeks in Ireland’s recent meteorological history. It will be hard now to discern any surface goings-on between shore and horizon with wind and swell likely to run for weeks on end as they often do in January and February, driven to us by lows sweeping across from Newfoundland in our general direction.
These lows stopped for that extraordinarily Siberian month, blocked by a strong high pressure air- mass to our North which made for a very still Atlantic allowing me one evening to sharply define the space between caudal fin and ocean and see through the burst of spray between dorsal fin and sky. It could be September but for the 10 degree water I thought as the three dolphins surged powerfully high out of a flat sea and all of this silhouetted by a low cloudless sunset over Renvyle.
Such acrobatic behaviour, in particular whirling vertical leaps is more noted of the smaller common dolphin which is usually found far offshore over the continental shelf in great numbers. They are only occasionally seen inshore and that’s usually in the southwest of the country. There was not enough light to be sure but these were most likely bottlenoses, which do from time to time leap and spin like this, and bow ride and surf of course too. But then the bottlenoses are continuously surprising us. Reports of porpoises with great shark-like chunks taken from them a hundred miles or so south of here this summer led to the surprising discovery of research, mostly from Britain, on violent bottlenose attacks on porpoises.
Where the two species occur together, the most common cause of washed up porpoises’ death was attacks from bottlenose dolphins according to The British Environment Ministry. They don’t compete for food and scientists are guessing that it is a simple territorial aggression, with serious costs for the muc mhara (the porpoise is the pig of the sea in Irish). Damage recorded to porpoises includes broken ribs, internal organ rupture as well as bite marks. Have some of the many that wash up on Mayo’s shores experienced the same underwater violence? Probably, but data and studies could say for sure.
The bottlenose is not the indifferent play seeker we may have thought and neither does the muc mhara dip from cuain to cuainín in Clew Bay as carefree as it could appear.
The bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) is grey to black above and light grey on the underside. They have a tall fin and a long, rounded beak with a curved mouth-line giving the familiar smiling expression. They are usually seen in small groups and frequently inshore where they are engaging and playful. The common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) is smaller than the bottlenose with a distinctive ‘hourglass’ colour pattern on its sides; yellow to the front and light grey to the back. Above this hourglass shape is black and below is white. They have a tall fin and a long black beak. They are more commonly seen in deeper waters in large numbers, but are sometimes seen off coastal headlands in summer. Report your dolphin sightings to The irish Whale and Dolphin Group at www.iwdg.ie
This piece appeared in The Mayo News 02/02/2010 edition
Shellfish on Bettystown Beach
Irishmarinelife received a report today of thousands of shellfish washed up on Bettystown Beach, Meath around the 12th of January. The observer was at a loss to identify the species, a light coloured and relatively large bivalve, smooth and unlike a scallop or oyster species.
After some researching it is probably the Otter Shell that she saw (Lutraria lutraria) which burrows in sand and mud substrates and is found mostly in The Irish Sea and also parts of Connemara.
There was a period of sustained easterly gales leading up to the 12th which led to the extraordinary disturbance of its habitat and its displacement onto the shore. We did not receive any photos of the event; if you have any, please send them to irishmarinelife@gmail.com.
Tiny Marine Birds, Big Migrations – Irish Times Article
Photo credit: Casrsten Evegang/PA Wire, The Irish Times
Least we forget that our marine life is limited to the terrestrial and aquatic zones, we host an impressive selection of birds who live out their lives, or parts of them along our coasts.
They can be big like the sometimes coastal winter migrant whooper swan, 2 of which beat a low flightpath past me last week as I waited for waves outside Doughmakone Strand. They can also be tiny and impressively migrant as the Irish Times reports today of The Arctic Tern. They make a round trip of 44,000 miles, pole to pole to be comprehensively global, spending months between March and Septmeber on our shores.
Similar to The Common Tern, but smaller, it is considered to have the longest migration of all birds, as The Irish Times reports, making journeys over the course of its lifetime equal to three trips to the moon. Read the article here.
Read Birdwatch Ireland’s species profile here.
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