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Displaying items by tag: Ireland’s Wild Islands

Three years in the making, Ireland’s Wild Islands is a spectacular three-part TV series that features the marine wildlife wonders of Ireland’s Atlantic islands.

Shot in cinema-quality 4K, the series is hosted by Corkman Eoin Warner who sails a 140-year-old Galway hooker out into the Atlantic to showcase the extraordinary wild magic of Ireland’s western islands.

In the first episode, broadcast this past Sunday (23 April), Eoin starts his island voyage on Rathlin where he witnesses one of the most extraordinary leaps of faith undertaken by any animal on the planet — flightless chicks jumping 300 feet from their cliff ledges down to the ocean.

Eoin then heads west for Malin Head and Inishtrahull, meeting basking sharks and dolphins en route before witnessing a remarkable breeding display of endangered corncrakes on Tory island, filmed for the first time in Ireland.

Then it’s south to Achill Island and the story of the Irish stoat — one of the few predators found on Ireland’s western isles. This first stage of his island odyssey ends at Achill’s beautiful Keem Bay, recently discovered by Hollywood and the site of the most successful basking shark fishery on the planet.

In the next episode, Eoin explores the woodland of Clare Island, finds Ireland’s only native reptile on the Arans and witnesses basking sharks engaged in an extraordinary breeding display.

The series also promises white tailed eagles fighting gales off the Cork coast to raise their young on Garnish Island; humpback whales bubble netting off the Blasket Islands; and the clash of grey seal bulls fighting for supremacy on Mayo’s Inishkea Islands.

Ireland’s Wild Islands is broadcast Sundays at 6.30pm on RTÉ One. Viewers in the Republic of Ireland can catch up on Eoin’s adventures on RTÉ Player.

Published in Maritime TV

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.