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Displaying items by tag: Lecture: Whales & Dolphins

#Lecture - The Friends of Glenua first 2018 lecture entilted ‘Whales & Dolphins in Ireland’ Current Knowledge & New Discoveries is to be presented by Dr. Simon Berrow, next Thursday 11 January. 

As usual the lecture programme is held in the Poolbeg Yacht & Boat Club, Ringsend, Dublin 4 with the talk beginning at 20.00. There will be an entry €5 in aid of the RNLI.

Dr Simon Berrow was a founder member of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group and is currently their Head of Science. He is also a full time lecturer at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, teaching on the Applied Freshwater and Marine Biology degree and runs the long-term Shannon Dolphin Study on Bottlenose dolphins in the Shannon Estuary.

Simon has worked on whales and dolphins since 1989, largely in Ireland, but is also involved in a humpback whale study in Cape Verde and spent 2.5 years on South Georgia with the British Antarctic Survey.

In his talk, Simon will introduce the rich community of whales, dolphins and porpoises in Ireland to the audience. He will share some the findings of new studies on whales and dolphins in Ireland from inshore to offshore waters, from coastal to deep-diving species. Also he will discuss what we need to find out in order to conserve these magnificent creatures.

 

Published in Coastal Notes

About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).