Marine Mammals

Grey seal pup
Copyright Mike Brown

As well as a wealth of seabirds, we are blessed with more than our fair share of marine mammals. Two species of seal breed here, with several colonies of each scattered around our coasts. The common or harbour seal is the smaller of the two. They are not great travellers, normally spending their whole lives in the estuary or bay they were born in, feeding on inshore fish and crabs in shallow water. The larger Atlantic grey seal is a more oceanic animal and one that’s born in Kerry would think nothing of heading north to Scotland or south to the Bay of Biscay for a few days if the reward for the trip was plenty of large fish.

The great whales are even more enthusiastic world travellers. The blue whale is, of course, the largest animal that’s ever lived. They have been heard calling off our coasts and have also been spotted in recent years. They are now rather rare in the North Atlantic. However, the world’s second largest animal, the fin whale, is a relatively frequent visitor to Irish waters and yet smaller whale species are even more common.

Many small whales are called dolphins and the very small ones are called porpoises. This is a popular classification rather than a scientific one. In general, dolphins and porpoises don’t travel such great distances as whales and there are several resident populations of them in our inshore waters. One example is the school of bottle-nosed dolphins that lives at the mouth of the Shannon Estuary.