Updates

The masters course is fully underway, and very enjoyable; yet keeps me insanely busy. It is now normal for me to be a Uni all day, and then continue to work on coursework into the night at home. It is a small price to pay though as I am learning a lot, and I am already looking forward to starting my thesis. The general idea of my thesis is to determine the effectiveness of a passive acoustic monitoring device on the study of dolphin presence. I will post further information on this later once it is underway!
This post will be rather fragmented; with various snippets of information. Blackfish aired last month on CNN and was watched by over a million people, with many more watching it on catchup or online. The fallout on twitter has been phenomenal, with multiple petitions being signed, people articulating their views and opinions, and boycotting SeaWorld and it's associated partners. Seaworld has already seen a drop in ticket sales, and this will no doubt continue with increased publicity and follow-on documentaries. With SeaWorld being such a global organisation, with multiple offshoots, it will take time to put an end to cetacean captivity and shows, but this is an impressive start!

Staying with the captivity theme, I managed to find time to take a weekend off to show my girlfriend around Cork; and took a trip to Fota Wildlife Park. It was a rather moist day, although we made the most of it. I was instantly impressed with the park; expecting it to be fairly small and basic. For the most part, enclosures were well planned, with monkeys and lemurs having "open" enclosures, on islands, and many animals such as Mara and wallabies free-roaming around the park. There were a good number of staff on hand to answer any questions, and an adorable young cheetah cub on display (Video). I would definitely recommend it for a cheap, educational day out in Co. Cork.

The present

A swan attacking on Cork Lough

That brings us up to the present day! I am now living in Cork; awaiting my Masters degree (MSc) in Marine Biology to start tomorrow. I have been here for two weeks already; but I have been reading a lot of scientific papers on the acoustics of Delphinid species, and getting my head around how exactly to tackle my research project. I shall be updating you on my progress over the next year!

The return - final

A popular surfing beach on the Peninsula that I called home.

My final stop, was in County Mayo, Republic of Ireland. I was providing staff holiday cover for the Coastal & Marine Research Centre, with an office based in Belmullet. In the two weeks that I was there, we only had good enough weather for two field days; cliff top visual scans using a theodolite for tracking. On the other days, I was in the office repairing databases, and providing help with Cpod data analysis. I may also be centering my Masters degree's final project on the analysis of CPOD data from this site. More on that later.

The return - Part 2

A Common Seal pup at Dingle Seal & Wildlife Sanctuary, Ireland

The next stop this summer was Dingle, Republic of Ireland. I was again volunteering with the Atlantic Whale Foundation; but this time not in Tenerife. This project has only just started up, and was understandably a lot smaller. At the peak, there was 8 volunteers, which is quite a contrast to the 70 in Tenerife. Most of our time was spent working at the Seal Sanctuary on the outskirts of Dingle. This is a totally volunteer run sanctuary, that is open year round; caring for abandoned and injured Common seals during the summer, and then Grey seals during the autumn / winter. Alongside this, some of us also did visual observations from cliff tops, and surveys for daubenton's bats.

The return - Part 1

Photo of Bottlenose dolphins from the cliff top.

So; it has been a very long time (around 2 years) since the last post. Yet again, I had forgotten about the existence of this blog! I am determined to carry it on this time, now that I am actually more involved in the animal world. I have been up to a fair bit since the last post. I have spent this summer fulfilling several placements. The first in Cromarty, Scotland; working with the University of Aberdeen at the Lighthouse Field Station. I was carrying out research for a PhD student, doing visual observations of Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) from a cliff, which was used in conjunction with a Cpod to look into the effects of shipping from the oil rig repair station in Nigg bay, on the behaviour of the dolphins. Whilst here I also managed to help analyse Cpod porpoise recordings from another project, help with photo-id of birthing common seals at Loch Fleet, and also participate in Photo id surveys of Bottlenose from the survey boat. While here, we also saw a juvenile minke whale; which was around 4 metres long (Video can be seen here ).