Ken Whelan

That could be a very serious issue, I think.

But in fact, they're coming out of the little mini mermaids parts of it, if you like, inside.

And a lot of these things, we're only beginning to really understand the subtleties that are involved, but they still have this ability to be able to hammer through at least the remaining few as such.

And then there's the oviparous, and they're the ones that actually laid the ova and laid the mermaid's purses.

But they are very special in terms of what they do.

So all of these different creatures have different ways of doing this.

There's no doubt about that.

And the interesting thing is that you think sometimes that you have to go to Kerry, you have to go to Galway to find these things.

In fact, the east coast of Ireland is replete in terms of these different sorts of rays and sharks that we have.

We've loads and loads of what we call lesser spotted dogfish.

Oh, yeah, very much so.

Tribe is a great term because when we were doing the original work that we talked about maybe 10, 12 years ago in Mooney, we were doing this big SALSI program where we first went to sea to try and find out where they went.

which are very often a nuisance for fishermen because there's so many of them.

And they are little, beautiful little mini sharks.

Then you have these other creatures as well, these other larger dogfish.

We began to look genetically at these fish and our worry was statistics because we were wondering if each river has a very distinctive genetic trait, if you like, within the fish, would we find enough fish to identify the individual rivers?

There's one in particular called the smooth hound, which I think is one of the most elegant creatures in the sea.

And it appears along the coast to Wexford.

And then we have these beautiful, huge, big taupe and greystones.

And then you have lots of different skates and rays as well.