{"id":61787,"date":"2025-09-13T14:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T14:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/61787\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T14:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T14:28:09","slug":"i-went-on-a-seafari-in-sligo-to-see-whales-and-dolphins-but-they-might-be-on-borrowed-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/61787\/","title":{"rendered":"I went on a seafari in Sligo to see whales and dolphins\u00a0\u2014 but they might be on borrowed time"},"content":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0Mullaghmore, Co Sligo, there is a boat called Kiwi Girl. The name, skipper Declan Kilgannon tells me, has no hidden poetry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an awkward question,\u201d he laughs when I ask why. \u201cIt\u2019s exactly what it says.\u201d<\/p>\n

Likely a woman from New Zealand he wishes I hadn\u2019t asked about. The answer is a shrug, but the boat itself is anything but plain.<\/p>\n

I boarded Kiwi Girl on a grey morning in August, decked out with sun cream and raincoats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A dozen of us filed on: Parents with children down from Dublin, waterproofs zipped up against the mist; a dry-robed couple; and beside me, the filmmaker Joshua Nueva, whose lens has made him one of Ireland\u2019s most prolific chroniclers of sea life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The engine shuddered into life and we pulled out of Mullaghmore Harbour, the headland falling behind as Donegal Bay opened.<\/p>\n

We did not have to wait long. Dolphins broke the surface off the bow in slick black arcs, quick as commas. A minke whale erupted from the waves.<\/p>\n

\"AA dolphin breaks the ocean’s surface to say hello.<\/p>\n

The children screamed and pointed, already scribbling into their own mental field notes. One girl whispered: \u201cThey\u2019re playing chasing.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remember her as the kind of child who might grow into a marine biologist, or simply someone who cannot stay away from the sea.<\/p>\n

Declan\u2019s life has been lived on water. He started young, teaching diving with no money, no gear, \u201cno nothing\u201d, he says: \u201cWe needed to buy a boat. What we could afford was small, just enough to get us out a wee bit. Then bigger boats, and once the boats got too big\u2026 to start paying for them, the diving needed to be subsidised, and fishing started subsidising that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, the fishing grew and the diving shrank.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t diving at all,\u201d he admits. \u201cI spent most of my time fishing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But fishing now is less about the catch than the record, he explains: \u201cWe\u2019d catch, tag, measure, record. We do shark tagging through Sea Fisheries Protection. We do the tuna Chart work through Inland Fisheries.\u201d<\/p>\n

On board, it becomes clear: The Kiwi Girl is a moving ledger of the Atlantic. Declan knows the whales the way neighbours are known, by habits and scars.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the whales have nicknames. We were with 89 last night, which is Hook,\u201d he said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t fluke, so we don\u2019t know quite what\u2019s going on there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA whale’s tail, visible as it flukes, as seen from the Kiwi Girl.<\/p>\n

Fluking is when whales pop their tails above the water to help them dive down. They call him Hook because it looks like he has a hook.<\/p>\n

A whale\u2019s \u201ctail has a unique pattern, like a fingerprint, but Hook doesn\u2019t show his tail. Maybe he had an accident somewhere along the way. Got hit with a ship or whatever\u201d.<\/p>\n

And then there is whale 24 \u2014 Declan\u2019s favourite, the whale he has \u201cspent the most time with\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He recalls: \u201cI thought we had a bond. He never showed up last year, and I was really disappointed. Then one day, there he was ahead of me. I got close enough to go; \u2018I know who that is\u2019. It\u2019s very unique. And it was wow, 24 is back.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the sea is shifting beneath these bonds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s been a bit of a shift northwards with wildlife,\u201d Declan warns. \u201cIf we lose the food source and the whales move on another 200 miles\u2026 It\u2019s all over. They\u2019ll be so close to Norway, and they won\u2019t bother coming down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The culprit is overfishing: \u201cExcessive commercials. We\u2019re going to lose it. It\u2019s inevitable. When you\u2019re taking away a massive food source from so many animals to grind it down, crush it, process it to feed farm salmon, I don\u2019t get it at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA Minke whale comes to the surface.<\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s south coast once carried the fame of whale watching. West Cork was the \u201cbig spot\u201d. If the whales move further north, Donegal and Sligo may be next to lose them.<\/p>\n

The m\u00edol m\u00f3r, or \u201cgreat beast\u201d, has haunted Irish waters and imagination for centuries. Annals from the 13th century record whale strandings in Kerry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Legends tell of St Brendan mistaking a whale\u2019s back for an island. By the 18th century, observers wrote that whales \u201cabounded\u201d off Sligo each spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Later came whaling stations in Donegal and Mayo, their catches so excessive that by 1925, the industry collapsed under its own greed.<\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s redemption began in 1937, with the Whale Fisheries Act banning whaling, and culminated in 1991 when the government declared all Irish waters a whale and dolphin sanctuary \u2014 the first such declaration in Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a symbolic act, but not an empty one. It forced a reimagining of whales as neighbours, not resources.<\/p>\n

That reimagining was amplified at the European level. Under the EU Habitats Directive 1992, all cetaceans are strictly protected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Shannon Estuary is a special area of conservation for its resident bottlenose dolphins; Roaringwater Bay, Dalkey, and Rockabill are set aside for harbour porpoise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Regulations require acoustic \u201cpingers\u201d on nets to keep dolphins away, and prohibit deliberate disturbance of whales. Europe speaks as one voice at the International Whaling Commission, an unambiguous anti-whaling bloc.<\/p>\n

The law is there, but the sea remains precarious. Plastic gathers in stomachs, shipping noise drowns out songs, and climate change is already pulling prey away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What Declan sees, the slow vanishing of the feast, is borne out by data as much as by instinct.<\/p>\n

\"DolphinsDolphins in formation, as seen from the Kiwi Girl<\/p>\n

Recently, Nueva\u2019s drone rose above the Kiwi Girl and caught what our eyes could only glimpse: Dolphins in formation, white wake slicing the slate water.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His camera translates awe into pixels, making Mullaghmore\u2019s wild Atlantic legible to a world that may never set foot on a boat. He is, in his own way, building a sanctuary in image.<\/p>\n

Declan says people come back again and again, some unable to resist the pull of the whales: \u201cPeople get emotional, really, really emotional. One woman comes every month\u2026 she was crying from the boat. She just wants to be here every day. She can\u2019t obviously, but she\u2019s out now once a week.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

The day we went out, we saw only one Minke whale. There were mostly dolphins, as if to remind us that this is not an aquarium but the Atlantic itself, unpredictable and wild.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet, no one left disappointed. Declan smiled when asked about expectations: \u201cThe biggest mistake is just expecting.<\/p>\n

\u201cChance of seeing an orca? None. Never happened. Then last week we had an orca in the bay. So, you know\u2026 anything can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA pod of dolphins plunges back into the water,<\/p>\n

Anything can happen. That is the promise of Kiwi Girl, and the burden too. The whales are still here, for now, and we still have the chance to meet them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But whether the m\u00edol m\u00f3r remains a neighbour in Sligo Bay \u2014 or becomes once again only a word in old stories \u2014 depends on whether we choose to leave enough on the table for them to return.<\/p>\n

The children on the boat, faces lit up at the sight of dolphins, do not think of overfishing. For them, it is immediate: The slick surface broken, the sudden spray, the feeling that another world full of joy is playing just beneath.<\/p>\n

They will carry that moment like a miniature bottle tucked into memory, to be opened years from now.<\/p>\n

If overfishing drains the sea, if plastic fills the stomachs of giants, if noise drowns their songs, then the next generation will inherit only stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n M\u00edol m\u00f3r will slip back into folklore, another creature mistaken for an island, another ghost that once swam here.<\/p>\n

Anything can happen: A pod of dolphins in Sligo Bay, an orca where no one expected it, or silence.<\/p>\n

The choice, as ever, is ours.<\/p>\n

Travel notes<\/p>\n

For those planning a trip, Kiwi Girl runs from March to November, weather permitting, with tickets costing about \u20ac50\u2013\u20ac60 per adult and family discounts available (full details at kiwigirlmullaghmore.com).<\/p>\n

Each trip lasts two to three hours and carries no more than 12 passengers, keeping things close and personal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Declan warns that the only people who don\u2019t enjoy themselves are the ones who come unprepared: Bring waterproofs and layers, because the Atlantic does not care for optimism.<\/p>\n

The Pier Head Hotel, perched right on Mullaghmore harbour, is the most convenient place to stay; you can step out of your room, see the boat below, and be on the water within minutes.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, Declan himself recommends Harrison\u2019s of Cliffoney, just up the road, for solid Irish seafood and steaks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d rather linger in the village, the Clashybann Restaurant in the Pier Head serves a dependable dinner with sea views to match.<\/p>\n

Travel tips<\/p>\n