Unforgettable whale dance at Castletownshend

I WAS gratified to hear that my grandson and his girlfriend, visiting our West Cork home from the UK, were fortunate enough to witness spectacular whale behaviour when they went on a whale watch trip with Colin Barnes from Reen Pier, near Castletownshend.

How marvellous for them to be on the ocean with wind and sea and slap of waves while a humpback whale and her calf swam beneath the boat, enormous fin whales surfaced alongside and dolphins (hundreds of them) came from every point of the compass.

For young people who live inland, urban lives, this was a day in another world, a marine universe that is always there but never before, by them, experienced. The scream of gulls, the gannets rocketing into the sea, the kittiwakes dancing daintily (and death-defyingly) over the very jaws of the whales as they feed, could not be so well conjured by even the best wildlife cinematographers. One had to be there, and they, from inland Hertfordshire, not far off the M25, thought the trip to be the highlight of their few days in Ireland.