'The dolphins we thought were 'missing, presumed dead' were actually 'missing, moved''
Good news: Fungie may well have moved from Dingle up the coast to Tralee. This possibility has been raised by Dr Simon Berrow from the Marine and Freshwater Research Centre at the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology. Berrow spoke to Bryan Dobson on RTÉ Radio 1's News At One about how dolphins who were thought to have died, like the most famous one in Ireland, were later discovered alive.
"We started studying the Shannon dolphins in May 1993", explained Berrow. "We called them the Shannon dolphins because they're a resident group who are always in the Shannon estuary. Every year, we do transits around the estuary looking for individual dolphins we know about from markings and we see how they're getting on.
"What we did on this project was look at the mortality rate of these dolphins. It's really important to know their birth rate and mortality rate. If the death rate is higher, then the population is in decline.
"We looked at 27 years of data to find out what's happening. You don't capture all the dolphins every year when you go out and it's clear that some die over time rather than being missed. But what we didn't realise until recently is that a lot of Shannon dolphines are now in Brandon Bay in Kerry, which is outside the protected area of the Shannon estuary.
"We started doing surveys arond Brandon and Tralee Bay and found that some of the dolphins that we hadn't seen in the Shannon were now in Brandon and Tralee Bay. The dolphins we thought were 'missing, presumed dead' were actually 'missing, moved'. Some of the animals we say in Brandon never go back to Shannon. We basically over-estimated the mortality rate."
But what about Fungie? What's the story with him? "There is a faint glimmer of hope - and I do say it's faint. Historically, there was always a belief that Fungie followed a fishing boat from the Shannon estuary and that's how he ended up in Dingle. It could be that he's not in the place he normally is so he has moved - or he's dead. Only time will tell."
Hear the interview in full below
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