Seal pups on the Blasket Islands

Pupping season is here again! At this time of year the grey seals start to congregate around the Blaskets. The mums-to-be mostly hang out around Beginish and give birth to cute little bundles of fur (known as 'whitecoats'). The pups are pretty helpless and spend all their time lying around on the pebbly beaches sleeping and waiting for the mums to come ashore and feed them. After only three weeks or so they grow to big fat seals and begin moult - losing their white fur in favour of a sleek layer of blubber. Around this time the mums leave them to fend for themselves and they have to learn to swim and fish for themselves. In the meantime the males begin to get interested in the females that have given birth and mating takes place. Juvenile males that are not ready to mate hang around the White Strand on the Great Blasket - at the moment there are around 100 or so hauled out on the beach. After all the mating activity has finished the seals begin to disperse, many of them making their way as far afield as Scotland where they stay until the pupping season begins again next year. Now is a great time to take a trip out the Blasket Islands to see all the activity.

More about leatherback turtles

Our favourite turtle looks like she's off to France at the moment... see http://www.turtle.ie/ for a map of her location. Also there was a good show on Sky One last night called 'Final Chance to Save' about turtles, a leatherback turtle from Suriname was released with a satellite tag just like Myrtle. For lots more info about the turtle tracking project see http://www.panda.org/ Unfortunately, the turtle that was released during the programme was killed 20 days later, most likely by being caught in a gill net - which says it all really....

Sunfish and minke whales

More excellent sightings this weekend - we've seen two sunfish recently - surprising really as we thought they would all have left by now - just goes to show, it's still nice and warm in the water!

On Saturday we had a full boat and not only did they have two great dives, they were treated to two minke whales popping up about 20 times around the boat. They were busy lunge feeding on a bait ball and didn't seem to mind the boat at all. No photos unfortunately! Never a camera when you need one.

Bye Bye Derek & Lisa...

... the place just isn't the same. Who will do the washing up now? And never, ever, ever let try-divers give up? And go diving in a woolly hat? Or do the bar-b-ques? Imagine leaving all this for a trip to the Red Sea and then on to New Zealand... You can see what they're up to on their own blog http://anadventure42.blogspot.com/

Dingle-wood

For a while there we had delusions of grandeur when a huge 'Hollywood-type' sign appeared on the side of the hill opposite the dive centre. Put there by a local artist as part of the on-going argument against the government changing Dingle's name to An Daingean we were sorry that it only lasted a couple of days before being taken down for contravening planning regulations. (Thanks to Jason Hourigan for the picture).

Irish Deep Water Coral In Danger

Glad to see that the unexplored coral reefs off our shores are getting some publicity - this is from the BBC website.

Spectacular deep-water corals off the south-west coast of Ireland are in urgent need of protection, a conference in Dublin will hear on Monday. Marine biologist Dr Jason Hall-Spencer says unique habitats are being bulldozed with heavy fishing gear. He has video evidence of the damage and wants the authorities to close off areas that remain pristine. He believes a satellite monitoring system could be used to police boats and keep them away from the reefs. "A new European law requires boats above a certain length to carry a black box on board," the University of Plymouth researcher told the BBC News website. "The Vessel Monitoring Scheme (VMS) has never been used to protect bottom-water habitats but that is precisely what should be done. "We could close these areas off and if people went in there to fish we would know about it and would be able to prosecute them. Now is the time to act."

For more great photos visit http://www.st.nmfs.gov/st2/coral/Ireland.pdf

And the winner is ...

Congratulations to Della & Kevin Fleming for being the closest to guessing how many dives Derek did this season. The answer was 70 - Della guessed 71 and Kevin guessed 69 so the proceeds were to be shared between them. Kevin generously gave his winnings to help our poor struggling divemaster (she's a student!) and Della generously gave the whole lot to help save the Blasket Island seals. Thanks to everyone who took part - we raised €44 which we will double to make it €88. PS Just because Della won doesn't mean it was an inside job!

Cathedral Rocks

Another great new dive site - Cathedral Rocks are just around the northern point of Inishnabro (part of the Blasket Islands) and are as dramatic under the water as they are above.

The rockface is extremely steep and plunges straight down past 40m. Every part is covered in jewel anemones and there are loads of wrasse and pollack. Neal even had a school of thousands of mackeral swarming around him.

Whales & dolphins off the Blaskets

What a great week for sightings!

We have regularly been seeing harbour porpoises, bottlenose and common dolphins in the last couple of weeks, but this week was special as there was a pair of fin whales that could be seen from Slea Head.

What a great sight to see such a massive whale (up to 27m!) lunging out of the water as they were feeding. We were not lucky enough to see them from the boat when we went out, but instead we came across three Risso's dolphins - two adults and one calf. These unusual looking dolphins grow to as much as 3.8m and are easily distinguished by their white markings and sickle shaped fin. Photos from http://www.tethys.org