We’re having a whale of a time

LIEUTENANT Commander Paddy Harkin, of the LE Niamh, reported that 100 orcas were feeding on mackerel 50km west of Tory on January 27 and 28.

According to the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, this is the largest concentration of the species recorded in Irish waters. “On one occasion,” Commander Harkin said, “at least a dozen whales were within 200m of the ship.” They were not alone; 25 fishing vessels were present, each catching 200 tonnes of mackerel a day. One foreign boat had 4,000 tonnes on board. Several had 1,000 tonnes. The whales, skippers claimed, had followed the shoals as they migrated southwards from west of the Hebrides.

The IWDG has validated 162 records of orcas in Irish waters. According to the Irish Cetacean Review, there were 117 sightings between 2000 and 2009. The animals appear in small groups: a male and two females famously entered Cork Harbour in June, 2001. That so large a concentration has occurred off Tory augurs well for the health of this iconic species.

There are two types of whale; those with teeth and those without. The toothed group, which includes the dolphins and porpoises, has 31 species. The orca, or killer whale, is a dolphin. The two most celebrated stars of the whale fraternity, Moby Dick and Keiko, were toothed.

Moby is in the news; remnants of the Two Brothers, a ship associated with his legend, have just been located off Hawaii. In November, 1820, the Nantucket whaler, Essex, was rammed by a sperm whale, whose pod the whalers were slaughtering. The ship sank and so began the legend of the famous white whale. Drifting in a lifeboat, Captain George Pollard, and three starving companions, cast lots as to which of them would be killed and eaten by the others. His nephew lost the bet. Pollard survived by cannibalism. He subsequently commanded the Essex’s sister ship, the Two Brothers. This hit a reef and sank, but Pollard survived once again and became the model for Melville’s Captain Ahab.

The sperm whale, the largest toothed cetacean, has little use for teeth. This deep water feeder stuns giant squid with intense sound-waves and sucks them down its throat. The orca hunts seals and walruses, as well as shoal fish. These gory activities, more visible than those of sperm whales, have earned it the ‘apex predator’ title. It’s not undeserved; working in packs, orcas can kill cetaceans much larger than themselves.

Whether killer whales have attacked humans is debated. Nordic folklore features demon sea monsters. Inuit fishermen are afraid of orcas and will, it’s said, bid a hasty retreat in their canoes when one appears. In an Irish school textbook of the 1950s, there was an account of an incident during Scott’s expedition to the South Pole in 1911. When the photographer, Herbert Pointing ventured onto an ice-floe to get close to an orca pod, the whales, it is said, tried to knock him into the icy sea. Such accounts help spread the whale’s undeserved reputation for hostility.

Visiting Heimaey, in Iceland’s volcanic Westman Islands, some years ago, Derek Mooney and I met the famous Keiko, star of the Free Willy movies. He was kept in a roped-off area of a deep cove surrounded by huge sea-cliffs, from which he was taken out to sea on chaperoned ‘sea-walks’ to prepare him for return to the wild. Accustomed to people, he swam right up to our boat to inspect the two strangers. Seeming forlorn and sad, he stayed quietly with us for several minutes, his great head protruding from the water. We were advised to avoid eye-contact. Seen up close, he was a formidable beast, over 7m long and weighing almost five tonnes. His dorsal fin, which he kept folded the way captive orcas invariably do, was two metres long.

The very clear livery of the killer whale is striking. Like a tuxedo-clad grandee, it has smooth black attire on top, snow-white linen on the belly, and a sharp line of demarcation between the two. A neat, white patch behind the eye and pale ‘saddle’ behind the dorsal fin complete the uniform of the world’s best-dressed sea mammal.

It must also have been striking to see more than 1,000 dolphins ‘on the feed’ near the gas rigs off the Cork coast.

The large pod was spotted recently by Michael Cottrell, while he was fishing around 30 to 35 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale. Cottrell runs the well-known Baltimore Sea Safaris and, despite seeing plenty of whales and dolphins off our coast, has described the sight as “the biggest he has ever seen.” Irish Whale and Dolphin Group sightings coordinator, Padraig Whooley, verified the report saying “You’re talking about dolphins as far as the eye could see.”

Whooley said the dolphins may follow the shoals of herring closer to shore and “then people may be able to get a spectacular view of these marvellous animals from land.”

The IWDG is urging anybody spotting the large group of dolphins to report it to www.iwdg.ie.