Deep sea whale watching provides some poetry in motion

Early last week, I went with a group of summer visitors for a morning’s whale-watching with Mark Gannon, owner-skipper of Courtmacsherry Atlantic Whale and Wildlife Tours.

Mark suggested we chased up a sighting of four fin whales off the Old Head of Kinsale reported earlier by the O’Donovan brothers from their fishing boat about 12 miles out.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” he told us. “You have as good a chance as I have of spotting a distant spout.”

This encouragement bonded us in the enterprise, even if not entirely true.

Mark and Hank, his Dutch boat hand, had the eyes and experience of old-time whalers. They knew what to look for, gatherings of birds, a colour change on the water indicating that a whale had surfaced nearby. Even the surface ‘texture’ could tell a story. Whales are oily, and patches of calm water can reveal where they have been.

Our sense of being part of an oceanic search party was, I think, motivating; and even when the boat took new direction — to motor five miles, or east, north or south — and spray lashed the deck, nobody complained but kept watching the near and distant sea. Excitement and camaraderie prevailed.

At about eight miles out, dolphins joined, sleek ghosts streaking ahead as if to be our guides. Others swam on both sides, port and starboard, putting on a display as if for our entertainment, leaping from the water, sliding over the waves — poetry in motion as they effortlessly kept pace with the motor power of the Lady Patricia forging through the whitecaps at 10 knots an hour.

Oftentimes, rafts of Manx Shearwaters rose off the dark water, breasts and bellies gleaming white, and we glimpsed, between the swells, Storm Petrels, dark, oceanic birds that looked like swifts (but, actually, smaller) as they skimmed the troughs, appearing for seconds and then disappearing — now you see them, now you don’t — as if they had flown straight into a wave.

High in the sky, gannets toured, brilliant, white and cruciform with black wing tips and pale yellow heads tilted to scan the sea. Picking a target, they’d drop like a stone, folding their wings close to their bodies at the last few seconds becoming like arrows splitting the sea. A splash rises, a small tower of white water, and sometimes, with luck, one would see them pattering along the surface for take-off, meanwhile swallowing a sizeable fish caught in their long, dagger-like beaks. They are spectacular birds. Little wonder that that one can while away an hour of a summer day on a cliff top, watching them dive.

We never located the fins. These ocean giants are the second largest whale, and a regular migrant through West Cork waters. The animal that, 10 year ago, overnight stranded itself in Courtmacsherry Bay measured 66 feet — 20 metres. Its skeleton, preserved and exhibited at Kilbrittain village, demonstrates its awesome dimensions.

When the weather goes against the forecast — as it did — the seagoing experience is often more authentic than when the sea is flat calm. Whatever the weather, 10 miles from land one finds sea-life happening all around. There, begins the world of the deep, the domain of creatures we landlubbers never see.

IT WAS about ten miles out that, next day, a humpback whale surfaced alongside the Lady Patricia and performed a classic humpback dive 30 metres beyond the prow, it lifted its mighty ‘fluke’ against the sky long enough for the delighted sightseers to snap pictures against the background of heavenly blue.

For them, it was the thrill of a lifetime, exactly what every whale watcher seeks to see, and the proximity was more than they could have hoped for, a 12ft tail — four metres wide — only a hundred feet from their eyeballs and camera lenses.

The sheer grandeur and grace of a humpback’s dive is unforgettable, and to have had one so close to the boat a rare privilege indeed.

It was a fine accomplishment for Mark and Hank to have found the animal and guessed where it would next blow. Getting so close to the fluke was ‘no fluke’, but the fruit of decades of experience.

Humpbacks, minke and fin whales, and occasionally killer whales, all are regularly seen off the West Cork coast. In summer, basking sharks, 26ft (8m) long, and sunfish cruise the surface.

Last week, a porbeagle shark measuring 7ft. was caught and released by an angler on a boat run by West Cork Charters, also in Courtmacsherry.

It was the biggest recently seen. Hopefully, porbeagles populations are making a comeback in West Cork waters since fishing for them commercially has been banned.