The waters off the coast of Kerry have been quieter in recent months, after the decision of Funghie the Dolphin to (ahem) retire after three decades of loyal service to the Kingdom. This hasn’t especially impacted the tourist business in Kerry, mainly because the Irish Government has made sure that there’s very little tourism business left in Kerry to impact.
But in the hope that, later in the year, some of us might get to head down south for a day or two over the summer, the good people of Kerry have unveiled their newest signing: An Atlantic Walrus:
Exhausted Arctic walrus spotted on Valentia Island #Kerry today far,far from home. Rare but not unusual sight by all accounts – first official walrus sighting here on the Shannon in 1897. (Footage thanks to Seánie Murphy/Valentia) @RTEnews pic.twitter.com/yrdQR1Ibam
— JennïeØSullivân (@OSullivanJennie) March 14, 2021
Walruses, needless to say, are not common visitors to Irish waters. This poor fellow is probably lost. Normally, in fact, you don’t find them further south than Norway:
Judging by the small size of his (or her) tusks, this animal is quite young. Walruses can reach a good old age – about forty – if they’re left alone and not hunted for their fat or tusks.
How lost is this fellow? Very lost. Not simply because of how far he is from his usual range, but because of how he got here – he obviously had to traverse the open ocean. That’s not something Walruses do, and he’s probably starving. Walruses are, in the most literal sense, “bottom feeders”. They don’t like to leave waters that are less than 80 meters or so in depth, because that’s where they find most of their food.
A normal walrus will eat about 6% of its weight every day – usually clams and shellfish and other things it finds on the sea floor. They’re not well adapted, like Irish seals are, to catching fish in the open sea.
This specimen, then, has swum across the Atlantic Ocean, where the water was obviously too deep for it to feed, in order to reach Ireland. The poor thing must be in a very poor condition.
The good news is that it should be able to find food in Irish coastal waters. The bad news is that it probably has no idea how to make the return journey to where it is supposed to be.
Local experts, according to the Irish Examiner, think he got here by…. Falling asleep on the wrong iceberg:
The director of Dingle Oceanworld, Kevin Flannery, said it is an amazing sight.
“It’s incredible.
“This is the first confirmed sighting of a walrus. It’s a one-off as far as I’m concerned.
”I haven’t seen it before, maybe others might have thought they saw one before but this is a definite confirmation of one.”
The leading marine biologist has his own theory on how he ended up in Kerry.
“He’s from the arctic. I’d say what happened is he fell asleep on an iceberg and drifted off and then he was gone too far, out into the mid-Atlantic or somewhere like that down off Greenland possibly.
If this animal is to survive, it may need human intervention to do so. There’ll be all sorts of debates about that, of course (assuming he doesn’t swim off and make the whole debate moot), as it relates to ethics and letting nature take its course.
Anyway, count me on team “feed the walrus and look after him”.
He’s come the whole way here. It would just be impolite, if nothing else, not to take care of him.