Historic

    Sightings of Cetaceans from years ago


Into our eighth  year, Sea Trust Volunteers have monitored the cetaceans from the bridge wings of the “Stena Europe” on a transect between Fishguard and Rosslare, at least once per month 12 months per year. As such we believe we are putting together a pretty useful picture of cetacean occurrence in the southern narrows of the Irish Sea on a seasonal basis.

    

To put this on a historical basis we will try and put together evidence to form an informed historical insight of cetacean sightings using whatever credible evidence we can assimilate into the section.
History and Mystery 1
 
From Nature in Wales Volume 16 No1 March 1978

Porpoises at Dale, Pembrokeshire, in Winter  

On 4th March 1928, a fine calm day with scarcely a perceptible east wind, I was on Musselwick shore of the bay at Dale. The tide was in and from Black Rock opposite me on the Dale side to the head of the bay, an area of at least 50 ha. (125 acres), the sea was boiling with surfacing and leaping Porpoises (Phoecoena  phoecoena )  (sic CB ) an astounding spectacle. The density of the school was such that there may well have been a thousand : at least there were several hundreds .The many gulls over them were not beating.

On 25th February 1940 a scattered herd of about 20to 30 Porpoises were in the bay right up to the mouth of the Gann They had probably followed a shoal of fish as gulls on this occasion were beating....
TAW Davies.

These and other reports (I have filed away somewhere) are extremely interesting . There are old accounts passed on to me by David Saunders, ex Director of the (as was) Dyfed Wildlife Trust,  a notable and respected naturalist who also refers to “contemporary accounts of the C19th often talk of them (porpoises) being seen in thousands in places such as Swansea Bay”

I hope to add to this from written reports as time allows, and would be grateful for any other historical data, allthingsgood, Cliff