Chapter 1: What unique experiences can you find on the Skelligs?
Now, when you think of cruising, well, maybe put that idea out of your head for the moment. You know what I'm talking about. You probably imagine turquoise waters off the Bahamas or ice sheets in the Antarctic. We can feel it now. But you don't have to go that far for something truly special. You'll find it right here along our own Irish coast.
So let's head there now, cruising around the Skellig's aboard the National Geographic Explorer. It's Jim Wilson. Jim, can you hear me? You're out at sea somewhere.
Hello, Jim. Yes, Derek, I can hear you loud and clear with the wonders of modern technology. I'm standing on the back deck of the National Geographic Explorer and we're making our way along the south coast of Ireland towards the Skellig Rocks. And what's going on there? We should be there fairly soon.
Well, what's going on there is the ship, which is a small ship by standards of the ships that come into Cove, which sometimes have thousands of passengers on board. We've just got about 100 on this ship. And what we're going to do is we're going to do what we call a ship cruise. So we won't be going ashore because it'll be quite early in the morning here. And we are going to circumnavigate.
Skellig Michael first and we'll talk about the Skellig rocks and we'll talk about the monastic settlement there, the 5th, 6th century settlement and all that and then we'll move over to what for me is the highlight is Skellig Beog or Little Skellig which is all about the gannets. And there we will have a look at the gannets up close. It's the best way to see them.
Our ship is, you know, you're higher off the water than you would be in a small boat, a much steadier platform. And they'll get to see the gannets in all their glory. No doubt about that. Now, Jim, is it stuffed full of Americans? Mainly from North America. We've got a few from Britain. And I think there's one or two also from New Zealand, believe it or not.
So we've got a mix, but primarily from North America.
Because the reason I ask you, any time I've met a North American anywhere near the coast of Ireland, they're looking for puffins, not gannets. And there's plenty of puffins on the Skelligs, and you're telling them about the gannets. What's going on?
Yeah, I'll tell you why, Derek. When you're on a ship, no matter how big or small it is, puffins are very small, far away, and not easy to get good views of. So we try not to hype expectation by telling them they're going to see lots of puffins. They will see puffins, but they'll be flying by or they'll be sitting in the water.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of the Skellig Rocks?
If he starts diving, he won't be noticed... Because the chances are he hasn't really found a shoal at all. He's mistaken something for a shoal. So to prevent the babies from misleading their betters by diving on non-existent shoals, they're dirty brown and so on. So it's very intelligent the way they are, these pelicans.
Yeah, and what's very interesting, Richard, as well is the young ones, like a lot of seabirds, they wander far more than the adults. And in the winter, a lot of the younger gannets can end up as far south as West Africa, believe it or not. And many go to the Bay of Biscay for the winter. But what you find is as the birds mature, they change out of that dirty, dark grey plumage.
And over a period of about four years, they gain the adult plumage. And as they get older, they don't go as far from where they were born. I think the term is philopatric, which means they are drawn back to where they were born. And so when you're an adult then, you don't roam very far from your breeding colony. And that's exactly what happens as they grow up.
Wander a lot when you're young, a bit like ourselves, and then settle down and don't travel so far.
You mentioned how they have set up shop in Dublin. When I started birdwatching, there were three gannet colonies. Now there are six. And the interesting thing about it, the two most recent ones set up within 10 kilometres of the GPO in Dublin. Isn't that a remarkable thing, that they trust us that much? They set up on Ireland's Eye, and they set up on Lambay.
So this is a trusting bird, and where I live, I can see gannets out my window frequently.
feeding it's one of the great thrills of being where i am because you see them diving and they're the most spectacular divers it is an extraordinary thing to do because if you put a stick into the water it bends now suppose you were flying over the sea and you see a fish well now where is the fish where he seems to be is where he isn't but the garrot is able to correct for that
It knows where it actually is. It's not going to be fooled into diving at where it imagines of what the light says it is.
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Chapter 3: Why are gannets a highlight of the Skelligs cruise?
So they are remarkable birds and they have a reinforced head because when they hit the water at that speed, the crash on the head is terrible and the nostrils are gone. So the water doesn't go rushing up through them. And at the last second, they pull the wings in and they're like a dart and they shoot into the water. Nothing more spectacular in an Irish fauna than that.
When they go into the water like that, the speed at which they enter and the gravity sends them down so far, but then they're able to use their big webbed feet and kind of use their wings to go down even further in pursuit of their prey. It is quite incredible. And when they pop back up to the surface, it's really like a cork coming up or a beach ball coming up from underwater.
They come up with a big pop. And then they kind of struggle sometimes to take off. They need a long runway before they can get back into the air. But later on this morning, we're going to see them with bits of seaweed. They're building up their nests. They're doing all that sort of thing.
And unfortunately, we're going to see a lot of those nests full of old fishing nets, greens, yellows and blues. They're picking them up, thinking they're seaweed, and they're using them to make their nests. And it's not great because a lot of them get caught in those little bits of net that have been floating around in the sea, and they die.
Jim, Terry here. Like Richard said, it's easy for us to see them now. We can go out to see them off Ireland's Eye and that, but I'm envious of you down at the Skellig's because there's nothing as nice as being down there. 20,000-plus pairs of gannets under there. One thing you haven't mentioned is the noise of them because when you get close to Skellig Víodd there...
It's extremely noisy, and you're watching them. They're plunge diving in, and as you said, they're diving from about 30 or 40 metres. They hit the water, disappear under the water, and then, as you said too, they just bob back up again, and most of the time with the fish. One question I did want to ask you, occasionally I've seen them fly in V formation. Is this normal?
Very normal, Terry. Good question. Yeah, very normal. Which is partly why they were kind of called geese as well. Because geese are well known for flying in V formation. Gannets do it all the time. It's amazing to watch them. I've watched them off the south coast of Ireland. I've watched them in Canada. I've watched them in quite a number of places because they're found across the North Atlantic.
And they really like flying in these Vs. And what's also very interesting, the way they do it, they seem to come across what look like imaginary humps in the sea because all of a sudden the V, all of them will climb up a little bit. And what they're doing is just getting a little bit of height and then they'll glide down towards the sea surface and on they will go again.
And of course, what they're doing there, we know it now, it's a bit like cyclists in a peloton where you tuck in behind the leader because that leading bird is going to cut through the wind a bit more, the air, and you can kind of slipstream behind it. They're finding out more and more now that it's even more complex than that.
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