{"id":175072,"date":"2025-10-02T12:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T12:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/175072\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T12:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T12:04:07","slug":"decline-in-porpoise-sightings-off-bardsey-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/175072\/","title":{"rendered":"Decline in porpoise sightings off Bardsey Island"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/m001n63w\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BBC Radio Wales Breakfast<\/a>, Mr Green said there had &#8220;obviously&#8221; been a &#8220;large drop in animals using the area around Bardsey Island over the last 20 years&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said the decline in porpoises had been recorded elsewhere around the Irish Sea, but that &#8220;the amount of decline is variable&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr Green added that climate change could be a factor, with fish population moving, leading to porpoise following them to catch food, while &#8220;they could just be feeding elsewhere&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He also said there is not a huge fishing industry around the Welsh coast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But that could be an issue out in the wider Irish Sea and in international waters where large trawlers can operate and we know they do catch porpoises by accident,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Whether they catch enough to decrease the population we don&#8217;t know, and that&#8217;s something that needs looking into.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added that the organisation was recruiting volunteers and training people to conduct sightings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He also described the difference between a dolphin and porpoise, with the former being mainly bottlenose dolphins regularly seen in Cardigan Bay and near New Quay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Porpoises are &#8220;a small animal with a very triangular, small fin on their back and you tend to only see them briefly as they come swimming up&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking to BBC Radio Wales Breakfast, Mr Green said there had &#8220;obviously&#8221; been a &#8220;large drop in animals&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-175072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}