The IWDG invite you to Whale Tales, their annual meeting where you can meet members and officers of the IWDG, hear stories from 2020 and look forward to the coming year. 

Whale Tales is the annual meeting of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, where members and people interested in whales, dolphins and porpoises in Ireland are invited to join us in our shared appreciation and admiration of these charismatic animals. 

This year, due to Covid-19 restrictions Whale Tales 2020 will be a virtual meeting, the event will be online, broadcast live from West Clare. A big thanks to Inis for supporting this event.

We will have a panel of local speakers from our head office in Kilrush and will link in with national and international guests. We hope to make this as interactive and interesting as is possible for you.

There are two ticket types. Donation and Free. If you would like to donate to help support our work, select 'Donations' and you will be automatically registered with 1 ticket with your donation. If you would like to register more than 1 person, select Free Ticket type for additional registrations.

Programme:

11:00: Welcome to the IWDG Whale Tales meeting

Session 1: Review of the Year

11:15 – 11:30: Pádraig Whooley will look back over interesting sightings of the year and the stories and people behind them

11:30 – 11:45: Look back over over interesting strandings of the year with Mick O’Connell and the stories and people behind them

11:45-11.55: Celtic Mist, winter refit, limited summer sailing experiences and plans for 2021

(COFFEE BREAK)

Session 2: Strandings and Strandings Response in Ireland

12:00 : A reflection on the Northern Bottlenose Whales stranding

12:15: Taking a look at the developing IWDG Large Whale Stranding Response Protocol with some international voices including Lonneke IJsseldijk

12:30: Special Guest, Joy Reidenberg, from Inside Nature’s Giants, on large whale necropsies and what we can learn from them

13:00-14:00 LUNCH

Session 3: IWDG Research Projects

14:00-14:00: Nick Masset and Pádraig Whooley update us on WhaleTrack Ireland, the IWDG large whale research project, with a look at the growing Irish Humpback Whale Catalogue with colleagues from Allied Whale in the US

14:30-15:00: Mags Daly, manager of the Shannon Dolphin project tells tales of her favourite mammals and shares some of her stories from the Shannon Estuary this summer

Session 4: Looking ahead and growing issues

15:00-16:00: Looking ahead with our local groups, meeting our new Northern Ireland Officer, Amun Muttu, getting an insight into recent developments on Marine Protected Areas (MPA) from an IWDG prospective and internally with Mike Tetley, Programme Coordinator for the IUCN MMPA Task Force and plans for the 2021 sailing season on our flagship, Celtic Mist

16:00 CLOSE with images from our IWDG members. Share your favourite image of marine mammal encounter from 2020 and send to enquiries@iwdg.ie

16:15 AGM: open to all current IWDG members. 

Presentation of Accounts and Nominations to the Board

17:00 END OF BUSINESS