*Members of the public who were unable to get into the meeting over the use of the pinger at White Strand. Photograph: John Sheridan.
ALTERNATIVE measures must be considered for protecting the welfare of Dusty the Dolphin and children swimming in White Strand, Miltown Malbay.
Water Safety Clare have confirmed they are pausing the use of a National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS)-licensed acoustic device aimed at deterring Dusty from entering shallow waters of White Strand.
Ennis native Michael Barrett has been a regular visitor to White Strand since acquiring a mobile home there with his wife fifteen years ago. He is among the leading figures involved in the campaign to protect Dusty.
Spotted in Clare for over twenty five years, Dusty is known to generations but has also injured swimmers in the county over the past two decades. “She has a bit of notoriety, there was incidents with people around the early 2000s, she was in Fanore and the Gardaí got frustrated because people were coming from all over the country with surfboards, paddle boards and blocking the road and swamping the area, Dusty was well known and everyone wanted to touch her and play with her. She went from there to Doolin, she stayed for a while and there was a few incidents with her tail and headbutting people in the water, again it was too many people, most of the witnesses say they were pulling her tail, somebody poured beer into her blowhole. She then had to move out of Doolin when the new pier was being built, they deterred her out of there somehow,” Michael recalled.
Her movements around Miltown Malbay are “predictable” moving from White Strand, Freagh and Green Island. “You can nearly predict at high tide she comes in pushes the shoal of fish in front of her, goes down and has her dinner. She is attracted to people and boats, I have a boat and if I go out on the boat, she follows me, she loves the wake which is the water being pushed away from a boat, she will swim in the wake and she can swim fast doing twenty knots no problem. She can travel around, she disappears sometimes at days and weeks on end, people know she is there, if you walk the headland you will see her”.
People are part of the problem, Michael acknowledged. “She has been domesticated, it was pointed out to us at the meeting that we are part of the problem and we have to accept we are part of the problem, people go out sometimes with the intention of looking for her. We’ve kayak rental in White Strand, people go out and they are told they might see Dusty. She has been around but there has been incidents, there’s video footage and recordings, I witnessed some tail slapping”.
Barrett continued, “We are part of the problem, we have to accept that, a lot of people will be very sore over this that they can’t swim with the dolphin, they are telling us we have to let her do her thing and not interfere, it will be very hard because she likes people know, she is attracted to people, she is a cross-breed between two types which might account for her being solitary. Solitary dolphins are not altogether rare but around here it is special, each one of them has a brother or sister somewhere else. We think we are blessed to have her, we don’t want anything to happen her or to the children, this is her playground, this is her home, we are invading her home, the children don’t come first on this one, you don’t need to put them in the water if there is danger”.
Monday’s public meeting saw Simon Berrow from Irish Whale and Dolphin Group point out that humans are ‘soft. dolphins play and they ram each other, cows, bulls and elephants will do the same but we’re soft, they might give us a nudge and break our bones’. Michael added, “She is a wild animal, she has the ability to injure someone, she has put people in hospital. They train children and adults here of different age-groups for eighty years, they produce the finest of lifeguards here every year which we all need, when I go into the sea I could get a stroke, heart attack or a cramp and I’ll want them, I’ll want to know they will swim out to me and bring me in, they are part and parcel of it. They are afraid that Dusty is going to injure some of these children, I can see their concerns, any normal rational person would, we think the use of the pinging device may not necessarily be the right way”.
A licence has been secured by Water Safety Clare from the Department. “They managed to persuade the Department that Dusty is a problem, we don’t think so and we’d love to persuade the Department that they are wrong, if we can do that they might not grant them a licence next year which is a struggle, they have a licence got so legally they are quite entitled to do what they are doing. They are saying it is for child safety but our concern is that if it is not done correctly, it could cause hearing damage, it is 145 decibels and 150 decibels is the sound of an airplane taking off, there are a lot of variables like if it is started too close to her, it is technical and there’s strict controls and guidelines whether they adhere to them I don’t know,” he said.
In a statement to The Clare Echo, Water Safety Clare said they were “delighted that Dusty has made White Strand her home and remain committed to ensuring her continued welfare. At the same time, the organisation has a clear duty of care to provide the safest possible environment for the children and volunteers participating in its training programmes. It was this responsibility that led to the decision to use the licensed acoustic device”.
Alternatives to the pingers need to be considered, Michael argued. “We think there’s easier ways of doing it. Take the children out of the water, they did that several times, when Dusty comes in and shows a little bit of aggression they just say ‘out of the water’, we have lifeguards here, they blow the whistle and people get out, for the thunder and lightning last week they came and blew the whistle for everyone to get out of the water. They are saying it is causing distress to the children, our point is that we don’t want to cause distress to the dolphin, the children are put in the water, they can be put in a swimming pool, she is a sea creature and is in the sea so you will see sea creatures when you go into the sea. They may need to think of a better control mechanism, there has to be some way of putting in a deterrent like that, the danger for us and it will happen that someday she will be gone, she will have died, Fungi died and they are still mourning the loss of Fungi. Dusty is part and parcel here, we never advertised her, we never ran boats or trips out to her or did Dusty the Dolphin ice-pops and t-shirts, it was kept low key. The best swimmers in Ireland train here, most of them love to see Dusty, there’s always some that might have a fear of her, she is a big creature and if she swims beside you then you will feel some bit of apprehension, she is big and can cause serious injury if you get in her way. Most people are of the attitude, she is not causing any problems so leave her alone, we’re afraid they will use this device the wrong way and cause an incident where something else will have to be done, if she is trapped in the bay and the device goes off or malfunctions maybe she will injure someone then because of being startled. We don’t know and they don’t know, there hasn’t been a to and frow conversation, when you have two opposing groups they tend to go for the jugular rather than meet and discuss”.
