Normally found 2,000 miles away, it’s the first time this Arctic species has been recorded in Northern Irish waters.
Unusually cold sea temperatures may be the reason
“A beluga whale is extremely unusual,” said Dr Peter Evans, director of the Seawatch Foundation.
A fall in sea temperatures could be why the whale, which was sighted off the County Antrim coast near Dunseverick, strayed so far from its usual habitat, said Evans.
“It’s the first record that we know for Northern Ireland and in fact there’s only been about a dozen in 50 years for the whole of Britain and Ireland.
“On the whole, over the last sort of 10 years, certainly the sea temperatures have been generally warming, but at the same time there have been a number of anomalies where you’ve got actually significantly cooler waters and that seems to be the case here.”
“This is not the first arctic species to occur in Britain this year. Back in February, the first European sighting of a bowhead whale was captured on a smart phone in the Isles of Scilly,” Dr Evans said.
“In that instance it was thought that the fragmentation of floating ice may have resulted in whales typically associated with pack ice, straying much further south.
“Whether the same has occurred in the case of this beluga is not clear but sea temperatures have been unusually low this summer.”
Dr Evans noted that “Sea surface temperatures in the northeastern North Atlantic (between Ireland and Iceland) early this summer (May) have averaged more than one degree C lower than the average for the same period over the past twelve years.”
According to the Seawatch Foundation, the beluga or white whale is a species normally found around two thousand miles away to the north in the Barents Sea from the island archipelago of Svalbard eastwards, where some thousands of animals live amongst the ice.
So much for global warming.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-33746156
http://www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk/beluga-rare-arctic-visitor-to-the-british-isles/
Thanks to John McC for these links
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