Fascination with dolphins continues

A COUPLE of weeks ago I had the pleasure of travelling in a small boat across the mouth of the Shannon estuary accompanied by a pod of 40 to 50 bottle-nosed dolphins.

I’ve had plenty of encounters with dolphins and porpoises in my life, and even a few with whales, but the sense of excitement never diminishes. In fact, there were two biologists in the boat with me who had been studying dolphins for years, in one case for decades, and they were whooping with pleasure as if they’d never seen one.

It was a particularly good show. We were close enough to them to hear the snort as dolphins expelled air from their lungs when they broke the surface.