Let’s hope June wasn’t a false start to season

After the best June weather in years (sunniest since 1940, according to Met Eireann ) the calm sea produced some excellent whale watching in idyllic conditions. Minke whale visits to the boat became almost standard as part of each day’s activities. They are most often inclined to do a visit on calm days, when the boat is sitting quiet in the water, with engines off and no noise from the hull slapping and banging in waves. For most of June, there were no waves!

The sea is still thick with phytoplankton, looking as green and soupy as ever, with plenty of sand-eels present and now, huge shoals of very small whitebait soaking up the plankton. Whitebait is a mixture of sprat, herring and pilchard larvae. As these tiny fish develop and grow, they tend to separate into shoals of their own species, and are vital to the ocean’s ecology. Sprats have been heavily fished over the last decade or so, with stocks at dangerously low levels at present (see previous logs). I have not yet seen a bait-ball of sprat this year, which is worrying, as all the whales show a marked preference for them, rather than sand-eels or herrings.

Conservation measures are urgently required to allow the remaining stock to recover, but as yet there are no plans for any such action. There is however a study of this little understood species being carried out by GMIT in Galway, which will hopefully lead to some sensible protection, as was the case with herring and mackerel stocks in years gone by.

July weather so far has been poor, compared to the last month, and whale finding has become a lot more difficult as a result. Too much wind and resulting wave action have made it difficult to locate cetacean activity, but in the last few days there has been a fin whale blow or two sighted off West Cork, so any day now we might have some of our big friendly giants to look at. Plenty of sunfish about and no shortage of blue sharks, plenty of them to be seen on the surface on any calm, sunny days. What is missing so far this season is jelly fish. Some years they are present in millions, but up to now they are almost non-existent in the waters off West Cork. With so much plankton in the water, the complete lack of them is hard to explain, although I have been informed there are heaps of them further to the north off Clare and Galway.

With half of July gone by, perhaps the second half will show us some better weather, which can only help with the process of finding and watching whales and dolphins, in calm seas under blue skies. Let’s hope so.

By skipper Colin Barnes
Cork Whale Watch