The Call of the Wild with Emer Keaveney, ORCA Ireland

In this podcast Melanie Boylan and Emer Keaveney discuss the new initiative that is monitoring the first real-time acoustic monitoring project of cetacean species (whales, dolphins and porpoise) that began last month off the South Coast of Ireland.

Hear how windfarm strategy needs to be implemented and as we also seeing climate action lead to a rise in the construction of offshore wind farms.

Ocean Research & Conservation Association Ireland  (ORCAIreland) is a non-governmental voluntary organisation that aims to enhance our scientific knowledge and understanding of marine megafauna in Irish waters through conservation, research and education.

We aim to spread public awareness of the diverse variety of marine megafauna in Irish waters and the importance of their conservation for future generations. As the renowned Marine Biologist and Oceanographer, Sylvia Earle put it"No water, no life, no blue, no green".

As top-predators, marine megafauna are ecosystem indicators of ocean health. In other words, if they are healthy, we are are healthy too and vice versa.

Irish waters contain a great variety of marine megafaunal species from 71 species of elasmobranchs (sharks, skates and rays), 25 species of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoise), to two species of pinnipeds (seals).

These top predators play an important role in healthy ecosystem functioning and many species face threats like by-catch and entanglement in fishing gear, disturbance from boats, fishing and ecotourism, noise pollution from offshore industry, noise pollution from shipping and offshore oil and gas exploration, and pollution from plastics, heavy metals and PCB's.

We aim to better understand and protect Irish marine resources and the wildlife that depends on our productive seas to help inform policy and decision makers and to promote sustainable living, through responsible ecotourism, to reducing our dependence on plastic, making conscious product purchases and working towards the protection of endangered, threatened and vulnerable marine species.

Our research and education is facilitated and conducted through opportunistic boat-based surveys on board eco-tour vessels, land-based watches and our citizen science project and the Observers App. We collate both historic data and co-ordinate monitoring for collection of new data on marine megafauna in Irish waters.