{"id":200929,"date":"2025-12-19T23:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T23:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/200929\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T23:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T23:01:07","slug":"dead-dolphin-found-on-carlow-river-bank-believed-to-have-been-pursuing-fish-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/200929\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead dolphin found on Carlow river bank believed to have been pursuing fish \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A dead dolphin was found along the banks of a river in Co <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/carlow\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/carlow\/\">Carlow<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It was discovered by a resident, washed up along the river Barrow in the St Mullins area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The common dolphin carcass appeared scratched and was partially submerged in water.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">P\u00e1draig Whooley, a sightings officer with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/irish-whale-and-dolphin-group\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/irish-whale-and-dolphin-group\/\">Irish Whale and Dolphin Group<\/a> (IWDG) said the dolphin was more than likely following a food source up the river, probably species such as herring and sprat \u201cthat come into our bays and estuaries to spawn\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cOver the period of a couple of days, there\u2019s absolutely no harm to seeing dolphins in river systems. But certainly after a couple of days, you\u2019d see them turning around and heading back out towards open water.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He explained how difficult it can be for dolphins to find their way out of rivers after extended periods as they become \u201ccompletely confused\u201d and their \u201cecholocation, which is their primary GPS system, is completely malfunctioning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Echolocation, he said, works in an open water environment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIt\u2019s not designed for a narrow river bank that\u2019s probably only metres across in places and the acoustics are not going to work anything like the way they would in open ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He believed the dolphin discovered in Carlow died from live stranding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe further away you go from the source of the sea, the smaller these rivers get and the narrower they get and the more obstacles there are, obstacles they are unfamiliar with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He described live stranding as an \u201cexponential risk\u201d for dolphins when they move out of open waters and noted that in the last week there had been four sightings in the rivers Bandon, Lee, Suir and Barrow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIt\u2019s something we notice every winter,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a particular phenomenon because it coincides every year with the spawning of fish.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Carlow County Council said its environment team engaged with the IWDG on the \u201cbest course of action given the unique scenario presented\u201d. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">On Thursday, it and Waterways Ireland removed the carcass from the water for disposal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dead dolphin was found along the banks of a river in Co Carlow on Wednesday. It was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[16665,59043,61,60,82,106279,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-200929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-carlow","9":"tag-carlow-county-council","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-waterways-ireland","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}