Humpback Whales Identified East of Fastnet Lighthouse by Research Student

3rd June 2022

A humpback whale, one of three sighted by PhD student Miguel Blázquez Hervás some 10 km east of Fastnet lighthouse, West Cork

Stunning humpback whale images have been captured by a postgraduate student east of the Fastnet lighthouse during a research trip off the West Cork coast.

Miguel Blázquez Hervás, a PhD student at the Atlantic Technological University (ATU) in Galway, was on his first trip out to try and sight some humpback whales when he came across a pod of three.

“I arrived down in West Cork last Saturday (May 28) and took the Cape Clear ferry Carrig Mhór,” Blázquez Hervás, from Madrid, Spain, said.

He was participating in a training course run by the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG).

“The weather was good but quite windy, so it was a little bumpy. I wasn’t expecting to see anything and when I saw the three whales, along with some common dolphins which were also feeding on schools of fish,” he said.

The vessel was about 10km east of the Fastnet lighthouse at the time.

The humpback is one of 24 species of whale regularly seen in Irish waters, and there have been over 1,000 validated sightings reported

One of the three whales has been catalogued by the IWDG with the identification number HBIRL67, but the other two had no previous records.

The HBIRL67 whale is a female and can be recognised by the tooth rakes on the left side of her fluke, the two lobes of the tail. The rakes may have been caused by an encounter with killer whales.

She has been an annual visitor to Irish waters since 2016, according to the IWDG.

The humpback is one of 24 species of whale regularly seen in Irish waters, and there have been over 1,000 validated sightings reported.

In 2019, the IWDG confirmed a positive match between a humpback photographed at feeding grounds off the Irish south coast in 2015, and an animal photographed at breeding grounds in the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa that year.

Blázquez Hervás’s postgraduate research involves trying to determine the length and body condition of humpback whales in Irish waters using a drone, along with an analysis technique to determine abundance and trends over time.

His postgraduate scholarship is grant-aided by Fundación Mutua Madrileña

Published in Marine Wildlife, West Cork, Island News

Published in Marine Wildlife

Tagged under

Whales

About The Author

Lorna Siggins

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Lorna Siggins is a print and radio reporter, and a former Irish Times western correspondent. She is the author of Search and Rescue: True stories of Irish Air-Sea Rescues and the Loss of R116 (2022); Everest Callling (1994) on the first Irish Everest expedition; Mayday! Mayday! (2004); and Once Upon a Time in the West: the Corrib gas controversy (2010). She is also co-producer with Sarah Blake of the Doc on One "Miracle in Galway Bay" which recently won a Celtic Media Award

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