A Whale Of A Time

Bray Head SAT1APR23

t was just another drizzly Saturday start for local fisherman Bert Aibreán as he left Greystones harbour and headed out towards Bray Head this morning.

And then, without warning, a large splash, and Bert turned – and caught the tailfin end of a whale doing a back-flop back into the water.

“There’d been a few dolphins here last month,” said Bert, better known as Bia to his friends, “but this is really something. I managed to get one good shot, and then he was gone. A whale, making its way this close to Greystones – it’s mad, Ted…”

Humpbacks in Irish waters are known to travel north-south along the eastern North Atlantic. To find out just how our friend ended up in The Irish Sea, we called the experts.

“We are very fortunate in Ireland to have at least 25 cetacean species present,” says Finnish cetologist Asal Altach of the Irish Whale And Dolphin Group, “from the harbour porpoise all the way up to the largest animal that ever lived, the blue whale. This is a humpback, of which there have been 92 individual sightings in Irish waters since 2019.”

Normally found in the southwest of the country, it would appear climate change is altering current temperatures drastically around Ireland. And those changes are leaving many cetaceans in strange waters.

“Incidents like this have become quite common in Ireland,” concludes Asal. “So much so, we’ve had to give the condition its own name, Monarú Iomlán…”