A recent sighting of a beluga whale off Donegal is only the second recorded this century, the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) says.
The remarkable visitor was captured on video by Sebastian Szumlański at Fintra on Donegal Bay last weekend.
Szumlański launched his drone in an area of shallow, brackish water known as the ‘Secret Waterfall’ to film what he believed to be a pale dolphin on Saturday 17 October.
But on closer inspection of the footage, the marine mammal was identified as a beluga whale, as later confirmed by the IWDG.
Belugas are rare visitors to Ireland’s shores from their usual Arctic haunts, with only four previous sightings on record since 1948. The most recent, in July 2015, was the first to be validated and followed a 27-year gap.
However, the IWDG’s sightings officer Pádraig Whooley believes that “the increased regularity with which IWDG is writing about species such as the bowhead whale, walrus, narwhal and beluga would suggest Ireland is being visited by these Arctic specialists more often”.
Whooley adds: “We can’t really say much about this individual other than its colour and size would confirm this to be an adult, of unknown gender.
“The videos do not give us cause for concern for its welfare, as it seems to be swimming strongly and breathing normally. It is also evidently in brackish and very shallow water, which is quite common among populations of belugas such as those in the St Lawrence River, Canada.”
Whooley hopes that the IWDG will learn more about this individual — though perhaps not whether it has a Donegal Irish accent like its Pacific cousin.
