Giant of the sea may be making a comeback

IN A WILDLIFE equivalent of the Olympic Games, Irish animals would win gold and silver medals. The gold would go to the blue whale, for being the largest mammal ever to have lived.

This enormous beast used to be fairly common in our waters but is rarely seen nowadays and only just qualifies as an Irish species.

It generally keeps well out to sea and only one was ever stranded here. The record for the biggest blue whale goes to a 190-tonne, 28-metre long female, caught in the Antarctic Ocean in 1947, the largest animal ever recorded anywhere.