Ken Whelan

Yeah, well, the great thing is that when you look at Tralee Bay and you look at the variety of what we call elasmobranchs, these are fish that don't have bones, sharks, rays and all of those other creatures that are just dependent on cartilage.

Tralee Bay, from an international point of view,

is a really, really important area.

It has very important sharks and rays and has just recently been designated by what's called the IUCN as a special area of conservation for these sharks and these rays.

What do you think?

It's really important.

There's only two dates you have to remember if you want to know about salmon.

And this particular white skate, it lays its eggs in the form of what we call mermaid's purses.

Christmas Day and my birthday.

Why?

So Christmas Day is normally the peak of when the female salmon actually lay the eggs.

And the skates very often, at the end of these mermaid's purses, if you could imagine the mask that Batman had with the little ears sticking up and they were protruding.

And when the eggs sit in the gravel, they go through a very interesting stage where they have a little yolk sack.

And it is a little yolk sack.

It's like a little chicken with the actual yolk of the chicken stuck on its tummy.

And they actually loop these little hooks, if you like, onto some of the rocks and so on.

And it feeds off this yolk sack until around the end of March.

And conveniently, we normally assume it's the 1st of April is when the little creatures come out, sit on the rocks and start feeding.

They actually anchor in these mermaid purses.

Others leave them loose and let the wave take them.